Doom Legacy Improvements

Graf Zahl said:

I work there, too, but the code is still a mess! ;-)

Out of interest, what do you do in the industry?

Oh, I dont deny it's faults at all.
32 player support was added way back when, Fab and Boris prided themselves with adding this, and for it's time it was an accomplishment. But it has since introduced new problems with compatability which most, nay, everyone I talk to think it wasnt worth it either. It's not a simple as pushing the 'FIX V00d00 d0ls PLZ' button, there would have to be a major rewrite of the code (unless there is pre 1.20 source still kicking around).
http://www.yeti.co.uk/archive/doomlegacy.htm
(courtesy Ling)
32 player support (and hence no voodoo dolls) has been available since 1.20.

In the c++ pre-alpha that's available, an entirely new sound engine has been done, or at least partially implimented using sdl mixer, and OpenAL is being considered as well. Many people have complained about the sound in the forums. The two main coders are taking advice well, not shunning it, but Hurdler atm is working solely on the new renderer, and Smite is working on hexen support and the c++ version in general. And true, not everyone is as receptive to their users as Randy Heit, making what they want in the port, rather than what the public wants (an exaggeration). Lee Killough was accused of this as well... anyways, Hurlder is always on the forums, answering questions if any of you should want to talk about the intricasies of voodoo dolls.

Anyways, here are some Docs for the (pre)alpha c++ version, in case anyone is interested.

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/doomlegacy/doomlegacy_c%2B%2B/docs/

DarkknightXC said:

Out of interest, what do you do in the industry?

Currently developing cell phone games. Other stuff, too, if there is an opportunity.

iori said:

Lee Killough was accused of this as well...

I once read an article where he openly admitted that he didn't care about users' wishes. Some attitude...

That's not a fair summary.

http://www.doom2.net/~mykdoom/misc/why_i_left_doom.htm

I did not enjoy adding features on demand. I enjoyed designing and implementing things such as conveyors, linedef 242, silent teleporters, more robust and synchronized demo features, simulated torque for hanging objects, bouncy and touchy "things," dog AI, the classic BFG2704. Those were things I wanted, whether others wanted them or not. And I know I made some people happy, so there's a small sense of satisfaction there, but it could have been done without so much bloodshed.

But the satisfaction was almost totally overwhelmed by this tendency for non-coders to send requests, often based on incorrect assumptions. ... I can't fault them for their ignorance, and I tried to explain things to them all the time, but it became tiresome having to explain this over and over, and even frustrating sometimes.

I was in a dilemma: I could either shut people out, so that I could concentrate on doing the "fun" things, and risk alienating people and making them stop considering me or my project at all, or I could pander to their every whim, which adds stress, and which I cannot tolerate doing forever. I leaned on the latter, but my most creative acts in MBF (all the "awe-inspiring" features) were ones that were not asked for on request, but which were my original ideas.

You've got believe in what you're doing to be really inspired. Lee K was - and presumbly still is - a smart kiddie and appeared to have such a mentality , but his biggest problem is that he couldn't shift away from what his idea of Doom was.

I do recall that they did want to add a higher-res in Phase I of Boom, but Lee effectively stopped it. I don't think anyone now thinks of running Doom in 320x200 or would consider it acceptable.

Shames Lee K wasn't that little more flexible and shame he's no longer involved.

Actually, I read the "admission" as a good appraisal of the development problems one faces from users. A good example of what happens is the total distortion attempted here on these forums from that very post. If Lee read that now, he'd probably say "WTF - that's not what I said". I'm used to it <g>, but I can see how someone much younger would see this as a strange thing to put up with.

ALL the port developers have their own agenda of what "DOOM" should be(and why not). Although users drive some of the changes (same as any user program), many/most changes have nothing to do with users, but just something that tickled their ass and many times adds nothing perceptible for the user in game play.

And even for level designers. Giving them a choice for 3 formats for exactly the same result in a level is not exactly an improvement, but instead something a developer wanted to play with. If one knows a port, these sort of things become obvious. No port developers are immune to following their own whim.

Dragging the topic back for a second, could fs still cause seg faults regardless of no fs present in wads?

Planky said:

Dragging the topic back for a second, could fs still cause seg faults regardless of no fs present in wads?

No. As long as no FS code gets executed it can hardly create seg faults and it only gets executed when there is a script. And I have never seen a proper script create segfaults. Only buggy ones.

DarkknightXC said:

I do recall that they did want to add a higher-res in Phase I of Boom, but Lee effectively stopped it. I don't think anyone now thinks of running Doom in 320x200 or would consider it acceptable.

You make it sound like he hated the very idea of high resolutions. But this is from MBF.TXT:

* Improved Video Options

+ 640x400 high-detail mode, without bad side effects:
- Doom world scenes and automap are rendered in 640x400 for higher detail
- Doom's aspect ratio is preserved exactly (no elongated textures/sprites)
- Status bar, menus, text, intermission screens all remain full-sized
- Optional hardware page-flipping

They sound to me like the words of someone who just wanted it done properly, rather rushing it in and risking doing a half-assed job.

Grazza said:

You make it sound like he hated the very idea of high resolutions. But this is from MBF.TXT:They sound to me like the words of someone who just wanted it done properly, rather rushing it in and risking doing a half-assed job.

For doing it 'properly' it was still rather limited. 640x400 may be correct aspect ratio wise but MBF's code was fundamentally incapable of supporting anything higher.

Graf Zahl said:

The code is a Mess. It depends on side effects, uses global variables in a manner that makes my head hurt and if you change something, beware, you might break something seemingly unrelated in it. I tried once to clean it up but it was a futile exercise. Ask Quasar if you want another opinion.

Amen to that. I spent about a year trying to rewrite fraggle's implementation of FS. I failed miserably because I can't even understand half of it. His tokenizer doesn't seem like it should work at all -- I've never figured out what it's doing.

Once I gave up trying to salvage the implementation, I attempted to replace it with a new compiled dialect. But, I suck at compiler writing, and that project got flushed down the toilet. It was at that point I chose to go over to Small. The last two years have been spent replacing FraggleScript with Small, which really should have taken far less time, but now it's finally almost ready.

So in short, Legacy could fix FraggleScript, yes. But only by replacing most of the code. The result would probably not be very backward compatible. This would mean they'd have to spend more effort to get the same thing they could get by just switching to a different language.

I should note that for the short time that SoM was helping with Eternity but was still on the Legacy team, we had plans in place to get Small into Legacy too. But that fell apart once he decided to quit the Legacy team :/

deep said:

Actually, I read the "admission" as a good appraisal of the development problems one faces from users. A good example of what happens is the total distortion attempted here on these forums from that very post.

You prove your own point very well indeed :).

I should perhaps add that I responded after reading the webpage given in full and not just the extract provided. You are absolutely correct what you say about the pressures of development for such an audience, and as such I empathise since I too have felt these many times since 1998, when I became involved in developing within this community.

The impression I have formed over time about Lee is of someone who had a deep ideas of what he felt Doom should be, was deeply committed and worked fucking hard to make his dream a reality. IMHO, the flipside was also someone who responded to the demands of a baying public not aswell as he maybe could of done. Judging only by the page about "Why I left Doom" you get the idea he did care massively what was said and done with Doom and it made him inflexible to any new ideas. This didn't work well within a team like TNT and that was the point I was trying to make. Lee practically says that on the page given.

The distortion comes from been collated in my mind and spat out again. That I can do nothing about that :).

Reading Lee's page reminds me how much that Doom Purist debate caused and how much a of bad taste it left in the mouth for such an arguably irrational discussion. However, that is very much water under the bridge and not important anymore.

...but I can see how someone much younger would see this as a strange thing to put up with.

I don't think it strange and I'm probably not as young as you think I am :).

Grazza said:

You make it sound like he hated the very idea of high resolutions.

Not my intention. I highlighted it as something that other people in TeamTNT would like to have seen in and seen done properly as Lee shows in MBF. Maybe someone more flexible would have conceded to doing that in Phase I. That was the point I was trying to make.

DarkknightXC said:

Reading Lee's page reminds me how much that Doom Purist debate caused and how much a of bad taste it left in the mouth for such an arguably irrational discussion. However, that is very much water under the bridge and not important anymore.

Ah, but the "purist debate" is still alive and kicking in various alter egos (aka "the DOOM experience"). To me this has always been ridiculous in the form of any "port" with all these "improvements". These very improvements (by definition) mean it no longer looks and feels like DOOM, except via a very subjective argument.

I don't think it strange and I'm probably not as young as you think I am :).

I meant Lee, not you? I meant "strange" to him. His reaction is more normal that not. But if one is under 50+ (usually), then it gets under your skin easier :)

Btw, I took the time to read ALL of it and found this interesting little note (which has some personal relevance for me):

Lee Killough said:

ZDoom ripping and obfuscating my and others' source code. More than that, it was the fact that ZDoom was still getting credit for it, and that almost no-one cared.

DarkknightXC said:

I do recall that they did want to add a higher-res in Phase I of Boom, but Lee effectively stopped it. I don't think anyone now thinks of running Doom in 320x200 or would consider it acceptable.

Maybe. But I argued with Tye (perhaps some of the others too on newsgroups) on hi(gher)res, making it a Windows port (for god's sake) and use the HEXEN format and he was against it. I didn't get the feeling that it was Lee saying this, but others too?

The reasons I think (but that was a long time ago, so details are fuzzy) were: no one was familiar with Windows and no one realized the HEXEN format could do all the "BOOM" specials" (I had already written a DOOM->HEXEN converter in 1996); they said they were "too far long" (not true since it took mucho longer to finish). Much later some of this was acknowledged as a mistake :)

Btw: the comments here on code issues is interesting. Personally, I find any code without comments bad code. There's never an excuse for that - it's just a habit almost all programmers get into (for reasons I do not understand). One of the clearest and easiest ports to follow as a coder is JDOOM (by far).

My apologies for reviving this long-dead thread, but of note is that Voodoo dolls have been added back into the c++ source.
May it be one of many.

And how many years did it take for them to get around to add them back?

Far too long :P

I'd better finish the bottle then...

Frist off, I can't believe I'm still discussed on Legacy forums... How many years has it been since I quit?

iori said:

VinceDSS[/B]

SKYBOXES!: Yes, portals were in the source at one point (added by SoM), but were removed for a vital reason, so say sourcecode comments. I'm a big advocate for these as well.

My Legacy implementation of portals and skyboxes was buggy and was prone to random crashes in the renderer. I took them out because I couldn't fix them in legacy. The problem was probably related to my gastly 3dfloor software renderer being used to get the screen coords of portals on walls.

When I sat down to put portals into Eternity I did so fresh without any of the code I put into Legacy, this is probably why the Etenrity portals work ;)

Grazza said:

The things that made me stop using Legacy were all compatibility issues. None of the following are even available as options:

• voodoo dolls
  
• ghosts ("Arch-Vile bug")
  
• lost-soul limit
  
• "actors" "infinitely" tall
  
• height reduction on death working the same as in the original game

So I guess they are the things I'd like to see most.

and i hated it in multiplayer, after enjoying its easy networking first.

reason?
the bfg.

it ruined every open map with a bfg in it, since anyone could fire it into the ground, instantly killing with the radiation, and there was no way to make it always autoaim.

to make things even worse, jumping before firing would silence the bfg (what you normally need a wall for)

so dwango 5 map 1 would play with people jumping around in the courtyard, constantly bfg'ing 4 of the 5 spawn points on that map, then jumping on the plasma to load more cells.

bah.

Thats certainly a new one to me...

Surely the Auto-Aim option in the menus' would stop this?

No it doesnt. That is client side only.

(Slightly offtopic)
Call me stupid, but how do you place a voodo doll marine?

You just need to add an additionnal player start. The order you put em in the map will affect where your player started... so you might have to reverse with the 1st ones you placed.

this can be done with all player starts (from player 1 to 4), most of the times authors forget to do it for players 2, 3 and 4. So when player 1 gets a bonus thanks to his voodoo doll, other players get nothing.