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Martin Howe

Some minor annoyances, but be nice if they were fixed:-)

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As a new user, or would-be user, of Eternity I have found a couple of minor annoyances that the Team might consider fixing in the future.

NB: this is b5 with the latest patch (20031218). Also, I use ZDoom for day-to-day dooming, so you guys have a hard act to follow :-):-)

Screen resolution - Eternity does not offer me whatever resolutions my system can support, just a few "standards". No support for 1.25 aspect ratio -- like several would-be power users, I have one of those Kapok/Clevo monsters with a 1280x1024 panel. 640x400 works OK, but with black void above and below the display.

When you exit setting an option, it exits all the way back to the game, instead of the main menu. This is unlike any other source port and is quite annoying when you are setting things upon first use.

It would be nice to have the BS key delete a setting for an item instead of returning the user to the menu.

Only minor things, but.....

Regards

Martin

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Martin Howe said:

Screen resolution - Eternity does not offer me whatever resolutions my system can support, just a few "standards". No support for 1.25 aspect ratio -- like several would-be power users, I have one of those Kapok/Clevo monsters with a 1280x1024 panel. 640x400 works OK, but with black void above and below the display.



Yes, that's probably the one thing that will keep Eternity from becoming a great source port. I have exactly the same problem that my system doesn't support the only half-decent resolution Eternity works in. The problem is that Eternity's rendering code never got updated to support higher resolutons and is still stuck to MBF's 640x400 which today is simply obsolete.

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I don't see how 640x400 is "obsolete", i think the word you're looking for is "notgoodenoughforme". I'm perfectly happy with 640x400 and resolutions such as 640x480 or 1024x768 stretch the screen for a very unnatural feel anyway, since the original resolution was 320x200, not 320x240. Eternity is a purist's port, if you don't like low resolutions use another port or modify them in yourself.

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sargebaldy said:

I don't see how 640x400 is "obsolete", i think the word you're looking for is "notgoodenoughforme". I'm perfectly happy with 640x400 Eternity is a purist's port, if you don't like low resolutions use another port or modify them in yourself.



Ok, be happy, but I (and I'm quite sure I'm not alone) am not.
If your monitor doesn't display it it's useless. Period. And even if it does, most modern monitors can't display 640x480 and lower without a clearly visible line structure on the screen which looks like shit.

And it has nothing to do with 'purism'. The simple fact is that until now the rendering code of Eternity hasn't been touched at all. I sincerely hope this will change. Technically Eternity looks very promising but I can play ZDoom without any problems in 1024x768 and most levels even in 1280x1024 so 640x400 is pathetically low compared to that and if you get used to the high resolution you won't go back. If Doom were still limited to 640x400 (or, god beware, even 320x200) I would have stopped playing it a long time ago. (As I already said, if your hardware can't do it it's no fun.)

and resolutions such as 640x480 or 1024x768 stretch the screen for a very unnatural feel anyway, since the original resolution was 320x200, not 320x240.


Scaling should always take the aspect ratio into account. If it doesn't it's bad. I never seriously checked but any decent renderer should do it.

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I am keen on supporting more resolutions in Eternity, as I've mentioned before. But there are things which to me have higher priority right now -- ExtraData and Small scripting. Once those are done, I will look at prboom's rendering code, I promise.

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sargebaldy said:

yeah, prboom 2.3.0 does some really ugly stuff. i went right back to 2.2.4 quite fast.



Not only you. ;-) This is a perfect case of good intentions gone bad. Most of the 'neat' stuff is so creepingly slow (even in 640x480 on my AthlonXP 2000) that it's utterly useless.

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Quasar said:

I am keen on supporting more resolutions in Eternity, as I've mentioned before. But there are things which to me have higher priority right now -- ExtraData and Small scripting. Once those are done, I will look at prboom's rendering code, I promise.



Great to hear! If that is done, Eternity has a good chance of becoming #2 among source ports. I don't think, however, that anything will be able to get ZDoom off #1 anytime soon...

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The only thing I could foresee dethroning zdoom is if Heit takes it so far away from DOOM that people stop liking it. But, I doubt that would happen. At any rate, I don't care about any perceived competition between source ports. People are free to use whatever they wish. If Eternity doesn't attract them, they shouldn't use it.

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While discussing minor annoyances, could you add an option to make chaingunners use the regular fire sound? They're really confusing me by using the chaingun sound.

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Martin Howe said:
When you exit setting an option, it exits all the way back to the game, instead of the main menu. This is unlike any other source port and is quite annoying when you are setting things upon first use.

It would be nice to have the BS key delete a setting for an item instead of returning the user to the menu.


Can't believe nobody pointed this out to you yet, but you just answered your own question. ESC exits the menu completely, but BACKSPACE goes up one menu level.

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There's really no reason to have it that way though. ESC going to the previous menu is a lot more convenient.

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Quasar said:

The only thing I could foresee dethroning zdoom is if Heit takes it so far away from DOOM that people stop liking it.


yup, since about late 98 or something daft like that i've been zdoom faithful but now i like prboom. sure it's not as smooth but zdoom != doom any more!

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Anders said:

Please, don't look too close at the ugly "rounding" code it has.

The code might be ugly but the output is the sweetest visual enhanhcement to Doom since 640x400.

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cycloid said:

but zdoom != doom any more!



Why that? Last time I played an original level with ZDoom it still felt like Doom, only better (i.e. without some annoying bugs.) Of course I keep some of the 'improvements' turned off (especially jumping and the 'throwing away' of ammo clips spawned by dying monsters.)

BTW, ZDoom's enemy AI is still closer to the original than PrBoom which utilizes several MBF enhancements.

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Graf Zahl said:
Why that? Last time I played an original level with ZDoom it still felt like Doom


Actually, I do seem to notice some small differences in the way the player moves and weapon characteristics (bullet spreads..?). But I can't put my finger on what -exactly- this difference is... it just feels that way. But to say that ZDoom isn't Doom is a gross exaggeration ;)

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Quasar said:

I am keen on supporting more resolutions in Eternity, as I've mentioned before. But there are things which to me have higher priority right now -- ExtraData and Small scripting. Once those are done, I will look at prboom's rendering code, I promise.

How much work do you think is needed?

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The game is the most important part of what makes Doom Doom, not the engine. Otherwise Heretic, Hexen and Strife would all be Doom, which quite obviously is complete nonsense.

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Mordeth said:

Actually, I do seem to notice some small differences in the way the player moves and weapon characteristics (bullet spreads..?). But I can't put my finger on what -exactly- this difference is... it just feels that way. But to say that ZDoom isn't Doom is a gross exaggeration ;)


The only thing I can imagine is that ZDoom uses different RNGs for different actions even in single player mode (all other Boom based ports map them together into one RNG if in non-demo SP mode) so the random number distribution is slightly different. These things should be so minor that under normal circumstances they can't be noticed but they can create subtle differences in the game's behavior. But it doesn't alter the gameplay at all.

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Graf Zahl said:

BTW, ZDoom's enemy AI is still closer to the original than PrBoom which utilizes several MBF enhancements.

This can be turned off very easily, and prboom can be made to emulate the original behaviour very accurately. The fact that it can also emulate MBF can hardly be a negative point.

Mordeth said:

But I can't put my finger on what -exactly- this difference is... it just feels that way.

The way damage to enemies is calculated has changed a fair bit. This is most obvious if you compare how many point-blank BFG shots it takes to kill a spidermastermind in Zdoom to that in the original game (or most other ports). Archies blast you much higher into the air than in the original game. I also recall Adam Hegyi saying that the player movement and game physics are different, but I don't remember the specifics. It does also feel that way to me though.

But maybe the Eternity forum isn't the right place for this discussion.

I'd like Eternity to have a built-in Doom2.exe compatibility mode (for play, not just playback), higher resolutions and maybe the option of an OpenGL mode. Then it would become my default port (which it's already starting to become).

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Grazza said:

The fact that it can also emulate MBF can hardly be a negative point.

It's clearly a negative point that the port which claims to be the most Doom-like has the MBF AI and a lot of other crap enabled by default :/

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Fredrik said:

The code might be ugly but the output is the sweetest visual enhanhcement to Doom since 640x400.

I'm going to have to strongly disagree there.

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sargebaldy said:

I'm going to have to strongly disagree there.

What, are you trying to say that geometry resampling doesn't look better than blur?

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Grazza said:

The way damage to enemies is calculated has changed a fair bit. This is most obvious if you compare how many point-blank BFG shots it takes to kill a spidermastermind in Zdoom to that in the original game (or most other ports). Archies blast you much higher into the air than in the original game. I also recall Adam Hegyi saying that the player movement and game physics are different, but I don't remember the specifics. It does also feel that way to me though.



ZDoom has a rocket-jump-like explosion algorithm (one of the most annoying parts of it) so the arch-vile thing is no surprise. The BFG code, however hasn't changed a bit. It's almost exactly the same as in the original Doom source and the damage calculations haven't changed at all. If you are experiencing different results it's probably just different random numbers which affect the result. I get an average of 2 shots per Spider Boss and 3 shots per Cyberdemon as with any other port.

Talking about game physics, most of the differences have to do with the fact that ZDoom supports true height checks which of course has consequences throughout the physics code. Since this can be switched off I don't think it's a big issue.

After all discussions about different behavior by different ports and subsequrnt comparison of the source I have come to the conclusion not to believe anymore when someone just claims that there are differences without pointing to a direct cause in the source code. Too often it's just imagination or personal bias, not true differences.

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I find that if someone cites a particular change in gameplay as a reason not to use a specific port, it's often the case that the change they're talking about was actually fixed several versions (even years) ago, but since they don't use that port they obviously don't know about it.

I also remember seeing many cases where someone has *assumed* that certain things have been changed from the orginal game, without bothering to check the facts for themselves.

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Honestly, see for yourself. Zdoom 2.0.60. Warp to E3M8, IDFA. Run right up to the spider and pelt it with the BFG.

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On UV, it dies in two shots in ZDoom, Legacy, Eternity and PRBoom.

EDIT: EDGE and JDoom too.

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I just tried it in ZDoom, worked on my second try. I don't think I've ever killed one in one shot before either. To be honest I'm usually happy to kill one in 3.

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I've just recorded 10 consecutive attempts in Zdoom 2.0.60, and it went down in one shot on 6 occasions. (Actually, it should have been 7 out of 10, but I accidentally overwrote one of the one-shot kills with a failure.) In my experience, more than 50% is typical, and it should probably be more for someone who aims better than I do.

Here they are - recorded with Zdoom 2.0.60 with the Ultimate Doom iwad.

I'm not sure what the percentage chance of a one-shot kill is with the original game, but it's rare; I have much worse than a 10% success rate even in this set-piece situation, and only recall one or two clear-cut instances in all the time I've played Doom (that's like, several thousand hours of Dooming).

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