About DEMOS stuff(Ocelot, Anders, Dev) and old ports, record bindings..

Hi!

I'm a beginner so much about Doom2, but I'm fascinated by everything related and trying to revive it in my country. I learned that doom is not a game only SSG, as this depends solely on the design map, which is the map of the style that allows greater use of certain more suitable weapon. The ssg is too powerful for any quake, but she's most underrated because there has respawn items and many armors and powerups as mega health, then rockets and railguns are most useful, especially in duels and Clan Arena. But gametypes like TDM, CTF and FFA, the SSG becomes more useful because there are many more players without stack.

Already downloaded many demos of current and former players(NoSkill, Ocelot, Johnsen, Xoleras, BadhKO, DevastatioN), and see its impressive moves. But there are still questions that intrigue me ...

1- At the time, in 1995, 96, 97, which was the port they used? Doom95? When they started using ZDoom?

2- What was the easiest method to record demos at the time? They used shortcuts on the desktop? Batch files? Had they created binds to already record with a given name or typed manually?

3- And nowadays, what has changed to record demos? There is easy binds to it with names, dates and times already included in the file name?

4- I've read last week the "DevastatioN's guide". From what I researched, the Offset Weapon and SSG's Swingshot has been fixed in modern port, huh? The position of the crosshair was aligned in modern ports and Swingshot was something the unlagged repaired and is no longer necessary to shoot off target for the shot hit the enemy while sharply move the crosshairs on it, right?

5- I wonder if team deathmatch was something popular in doom, and if so, I wonder if there are demos of games out there, it was played in 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4, and what were the most appropriate wads. I hear say that tdmax_b4.wad was popular in TDM (map1, 4, 10, 16 and 29), but do not know if it's true.

thanks in advance! ;)

Lejionator said:

1- At the time, in 1995, 96, 97, which was the port they used? Doom95? When they started using ZDoom?

They used Vanilla Doom (DOOM2.EXE), Doom 95 was incapable (due to a bug) of recording demos (without a hack). For deathmatch and stuff, they would still be using Vanilla well into 2008 with dedicated Windows 98 SE machines for it.

Lejionator said:

2- What was the easiest method to record demos at the time? They used shortcuts on the desktop? Batch files? Had they created binds to already record with a given name or typed manually?

doom2 -record foo -maxdemo 1024

Lejionator said:

3- And nowadays, what has changed to record demos? There is easy binds to it with names, dates and times already included in the file name?

Launcher if there is any. However vanilla is limited to demos containing only 8 characters, due to DOS. Other ports running on modern systems do not have such limitations.

Lejionator said:

4- I've read last week the "DevastatioN's guide". From what I researched, the Offset Weapon and SSG's Swingshot has been fixed in modern port, huh? The position of the crosshair was aligned in modern ports and Swingshot was something the unlagged repaired and is no longer necessary to shoot off target for the shot hit the enemy while sharply move the crosshairs on it, right?

THEY DARE CHANGE THE GAME OF DOOM!?!?! THEN THEY HAST LOST AN EIGHTH! AFAIK, the hitscan spread of the SSG varies slightly depending on the angle you are facing. Also when it comes to netgames, it depends on the game you are playing. The way the game is played on one port over the internet does not always apply to those of other ports, especially between synchronized (Vanilla, Chocolate Doom, Doom Legacy, ReMooD, PrBoom, ZDoom) and desynchronized games (CSDoom, Odamex, Zandronum, Skulltag, ZDaemon).

Lejionator said:

5- I wonder if team deathmatch was something popular in doom, and if so, I wonder if there are demos of games out there, it was played in 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4, and what were the most appropriate wads. I hear say that tdmax_b4.wad was popular in TDM (map1, 4, 10, 16 and 29), but do not know if it's true.

It was, however there were no concepts of teams in Vanilla Doom. Thus it was mentioned in the TXT that it is for example Green+Brown vs. Indigo+Red (which is a bit better when it comes to colors). Then at the end of the game, the frags would be added up and allied kills counted down to see which team won the game. Any map can work for teamplay and there are some team games on say DOOM2.WAD MAP11 for example.

I have memories of setting up a one-button-quit-to-dos function, or am I thinking of a port? That is a big deal when attempting a difficult run dozens or hundreds of times...

GhostlyDeath said:

They used Vanilla Doom (DOOM2.EXE), Doom 95 was incapable (due to a bug) of recording demos (without a hack). For deathmatch and stuff, they would still be using Vanilla well into 2008 with dedicated Windows 98 SE machines for it.

Hmmm... then doom2.exe default was used in windows 95, 98, huh? I think this may be incompatible today in OS nowadays. I think I'll never be able to play it on my win 8.1, but that's not important, after all, we have ZDoom, ChocolateDoom and odamex, for example. So I can understand that they began using ZDoom from 2008, right?
And tell me more about this particular hack when recording demos in doom95. I'm curious!

GhostlyDeath said:

doom2 -record foo -maxdemo 1024

This command-line parameter called "-maxdemo" exists only in the vanilla doom2, not ZDoom. So from ZDoom, there was no size limit for file demos, right? If a demo was bigger than 1024kb, what happened?

GhostlyDeath said:

Launcher if there is any. However vanilla is limited to demos containing only 8 characters, due to DOS. Other ports running on modern systems do not have such limitations.

From what I understand, there is no special binds to record demos, a launcher one(like Doomseeker) does the job, even on lan.

GhostlyDeath said:

THEY DARE CHANGE THE GAME OF DOOM!?!?! THEN THEY HAST LOST AN EIGHTH! AFAIK, the hitscan spread of the SSG varies slightly depending on the angle you are facing. Also when it comes to netgames, it depends on the game you are playing. The way the game is played on one port over the internet does not always apply to those of other ports, especially between synchronized (Vanilla, Chocolate Doom, Doom Legacy, ReMooD, PrBoom, ZDoom) and desynchronized games (CSDoom, Odamex, Zandronum, Skulltag, ZDaemon).

SSG's swingshot still occurs in netgames? And what is this synchronized and desynchronized games?

Vorpal said:

I have memories of setting up a one-button-quit-to-dos function, or am I thinking of a port? That is a big deal when attempting a difficult run dozens or hundreds of times...

This seems be cool, dude! What it really does? Sorry my poor english!


Changing the subject a little, saw a very strange thing today a demo that I was watching. I get a good demo pack ziped here:

http://www.doom2.net/doom2/lmps.html (Anders vs Ocelot)

The OCANM1K.LMP(map01), both players start play normally it to watch, but early in the demo (around the frag 10 of ocelot), they start to get mad or blind, Anders starts killing himself with rockets on the wall at BFG room and Ocelot wandering in the outside(secret garden). And they were in lan! What happened here???

thank you very much by replies!!

Lejionator said:

So I can understand that they began using ZDoom from 2008, right?

Complete misunderstanding.

scifista42 said:

Complete misunderstanding.

then?

the most common port for recording is Prboom+, and usually people only use G/Zdoom to record demos for wads that are not compatible with Prboom+.

Lejionator said:

1- At the time, in 1995, 96, 97, which was the port they used? Doom95? When they started using ZDoom?

In 1995,96,97 doom2.exe, the original game program from id software, was used. The competitive scene gradually shifted away from exe and onto online ports in the early 2000‘s. The source port scenes quickly grew far larger than the doom2.exe scene because of the convenience advantages they brought (the original game from id software while a classic, was raw and buggy compared to what you are used to nowadays for an fps game). Additionally, under internet latency, client server architecture offers better multiplayer abilities than the p2p doom came with, though it’s debatable at what point in time the doom c/s source ports surpassed the original in terms of play quality over the internet. Still, while the source port scenes attracted most all the players, a few of the top competitive players stuck to playing private games of doom2.exe for a while longer before migrating themselves. It’s safe to say that by at least 2004 the competitive scene had moved to ZDaemon. It then stayed on ZDaemon until late 2011 or so, after which it migrated to Odamex in a much smaller capacity.

Lejionator said:

2- What was the easiest method to record demos at the time? They used shortcuts on the desktop? Batch files? Had they created binds to already record with a given name or typed manually?

Starting a doom2.exe game isn’t like what you are used to today where you just double click on a server to start. You had to make sure everyone was ready and manually type in a lot of parameters from the command line, so typing out out one more for a demo wasn’t too bad and was how most players did it afaik. Additionally, actually recording a demo in doom2.exe created a lag which hurt player performance so there was always a decision about whether to record a match or not.

Lejionator said:

3- And nowadays, what has changed to record demos? There is easy binds to it with names, dates and times already included in the file name?

Nowadays with the modern source ports demo recording is a lot easier. You can have your port auto record any game you join or simply make a start and stop recording key bind.

Lejionator said:

4- I've read last week the "DevastatioN's guide". From what I researched, the Offset Weapon and SSG's Swingshot has been fixed in modern port, huh? The position of the crosshair was aligned in modern ports and Swingshot was something the unlagged repaired and is no longer necessary to shoot off target for the shot hit the enemy while sharply move the crosshairs on it, right?

The weapon offset Devastation talks about is with regards to the default original weapon sprites. The crosshair in modern ports is perfectly placed and if you look closely you can see that the weapon sprites are not perfectly aligned with the crosshair. doom2.exe didn’t have a crosshair and some players aimed with the weapon sprite. If you try to aim with the weapon sprite, you should aim off center. As far as swingshots go, I think there’s always been a debate as to whether they exist in both doom2.exe and modern ports. Even though the code is now open source, I don’t think anyone capable enough has bothered with sifting through it to verify if indeed there is any scientific basis for the existence of a swingshot or not. For what it’s worth, I personally don’t try to execute them. While I don’t think I’m a player with overpowering aim, my aim is good enough that combined with the other skills of the game, I get good results. So, swingshots don’t seem to be a necessary part of aiming.

Lejionator said:

5- I wonder if team deathmatch was something popular in doom, and if so, I wonder if there are demos of games out there, it was played in 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4, and what were the most appropriate wads. I hear say that tdmax_b4.wad was popular in TDM (map1, 4, 10, 16 and 29), but do not know if it's true.

TDM has never been that popular in doom. CTF is much more popular as a competitive team mode.

Lejionator said:

The OCANM1K.LMP(map01), both players start play normally it to watch, but early in the demo (around the frag 10 of ocelot), they start to get mad or blind, Anders starts killing himself with rockets on the wall at BFG room and Ocelot wandering in the outside(secret garden). And they were in lan! What happened here???

I watched the demo you listed up until frag 20 and never saw any crazy behavior. Your demo must have screwed up in some place. The game was paused for a little bit. Maybe your method of playback is incompatible with the pause? Just an idea.

Btw doomworld moderators: This thread got moved to the speed run demo section even though it's not about speed runs. It would probably be better suited for a multiplayer section. If only one of those existed.... ;)

Lejionator said:

Changing the subject a little, saw a very strange thing today a demo that I was watching. I get a good demo pack ziped here:

http://www.doom2.net/doom2/lmps.html (Anders vs Ocelot)

The OCANM1K.LMP(map01), both players start play normally it to watch, but early in the demo (around the frag 10 of ocelot), they start to get mad or blind, Anders starts killing himself with rockets on the wall at BFG room and Ocelot wandering in the outside(secret garden). And they were in lan! What happened here???

Which port did you use to watch the demo? Keep in mind that demos easily "desync" in incompatible ports such as ZDoom, which is also why ZDoom generally isn't used for demo recording (or playback). The demo is probably supposed to be watched in vanilla v1.9 exe, then it also should work in Chocolate Doom, or in PrBoom-plus with "-complevel 2" parameter.

In ports that care about Demo compatiblity, if a demo you play desyncs but runs fine in say DOOM2.EXE, then it is a bug and should be reported.

First, thanks to everyone who helped me better understand this fun game! Mainly to JKist3, I'm a fan of your gameplay. Nice work there at QuakeCon 2013, man! The Grand finals was awesome!!

Thanks, guys. Your answers have clarified a lot of things in relation to the method used by the doom players at that time, both about how they played and as they recorded games. For me, this has very important historical value.

Just an addendum regarding "swingshots", I've read it a topic regarding zandronum forum and a guy said so: I think the dude didn't realise that there's actually a three or four tic delay between hitting +attack and actually firing, and though that that "somehow calculate[d] into your [shot's angle]". I believe this to be due to a time delay between the actions press the button to shoot and actually shoot. And as modern ports have unlagged netcode, maybe this is fixed? Just a guess, after all.

I will soon create a lanparty event in my city on Doom2 and I'll try to do as many people enjoy and encourage the competitive spirit in this game. If everything is successful, we will make further editions, just for fun and to revive the old Doom! And who knows revive the national community, haha. Not hurt to dream! After that I will post here the result of lanparty!

A question: at the time of doom2.exe, there was no way to access the in-game scores during a deathmatch game?

JKist3 said:

I watched the demo you listed up until frag 20 and never saw any crazy behavior. Your demo must have screwed up in some place. The game was paused for a little bit. Maybe your method of playback is incompatible with the pause? Just an idea.

Btw doomworld moderators: This thread got moved to the speed run demo section even though it's not about speed runs. It would probably be better suited for a multiplayer section. If only one of those existed.... ;)

scifista42 said:

Which port did you use to watch the demo? Keep in mind that demos easily "desync" in incompatible ports such as ZDoom, which is also why ZDoom generally isn't used for demo recording (or playback). The demo is probably supposed to be watched in vanilla v1.9 exe, then it also should work in Chocolate Doom, or in PrBoom-plus with "-complevel 2" parameter.

GhostlyDeath said:

In ports that care about Demo compatiblity, if a demo you play desyncs but runs fine in say DOOM2.EXE, then it is a bug and should be reported.

I do not know which port JKist3 used, but at the time I assist this demo using Odamex(cuz Odamex RULEZ!). And the demo always make that bug exactly at frag 16 of Ocelot(green color).
I tried to see OCANM1K.LMP again in Odamex and the same thing happens. So I take scifista42 tip and downloaded PrBoom+ with "-complevel 2" parameter and used it to watch the same demo. And finally everything went well, the game ran perfectly! I did not know that these things happen and I remember that GhostlyDeath had mentioned about synchronized and desynchronized ports, and do not understand what that means.

Basically, different ports may behave differently. That's why demos are not universally compatible. To watch a demo recorded in a certain port with certain compatibility settings, you should preferably use the same version of the same port with the same compatibility settings. Thankfully, compatibility between certain "classic" ports is guaranteed, for example Chocolate Doom and "PrBoom-plus -complevel 2" exist precisely to emulate vanilla compatibility and allow watching vanilla demos (among other things, of course). But there is no wonder that something like Odamex (which is derived from an old version of ZDoom, which itself changed a lot of game behaviour) will "desync" (desynchronize, break) your vanilla demos when trying to play them back.

Lejionator said:

First, thanks to everyone who helped me better understand this fun game! Mainly to JKist3, I'm a fan of your gameplay. Nice work there at QuakeCon 2013, man! The Grand finals was awesome!!

Thanks! Glad you enjoy doom multiplayer.

Lejionator said:

Just an addendum regarding "swingshots", I've read it a topic regarding zandronum forum and a guy said so: I think the dude didn't realise that there's actually a three or four tic delay between hitting +attack and actually firing, and though that that "somehow calculate[d] into your [shot's angle]". I believe this to be due to a time delay between the actions press the button to shoot and actually shoot. And as modern ports have unlagged netcode, maybe this is fixed? Just a guess, after all.

There is indeed a delay between +attack and pellets coming out of the gun. In modern ports with unlagged, opponent positions at the time of pellets getting shot are used for damage calculation, not positions at the time of +attack. So there is still a meaningful delay between these two things. Previously, before the ports had unlagged, you had the additional delay of internet latency to worry about which made aiming on them much harder. Due to the way the p2p netcode/lancode worked in the original doom2.exe, you saw the opponent where they actually were and would need to aim hitscan weapons the same way as on the current unlagged netcode ports. Keep in mind though, swingshots were being discussed back in the doom2.exe days before any of these client/server ports existed, whether they had unlagged netcode or not, so later client/server netcode behavior would not have been the cause of the mythical “swingshot”.

Lejionator said:

A question: at the time of doom2.exe, there was no way to access the in-game scores during a deathmatch game?

No, there was no in game scoreboard. You had to count your opponent's frags in your head. Good luck playing in a FFA match like that! You can see what I mean when I say the original game while a classic was pretty raw and unrefined.

Lejionator said:

I do not know which port JKist3 used, but at the time I assist this demo using Odamex(cuz Odamex RULEZ!). And the demo always make that bug exactly at frag 16 of Ocelot(green color).
I tried to see OCANM1K.LMP again in Odamex and the same thing happens. So I take scifista42 tip and downloaded PrBoom+ with "-complevel 2" parameter and used it to watch the same demo. And finally everything went well, the game ran perfectly! I did not know that these things happen and I remember that GhostlyDeath had mentioned about synchronized and desynchronized ports, and do not understand what that means.

I used doom95 to play the demo. As I mentioned before there was a point where the game was paused. This is after frag 15 from what I remember, so it is indeed most likely the cause of your problem. Regarding GhostlyDeath's comments: some ports try to maintain vanilla compatibility (you can watch lmp demos on them from doom2.exe) while others don't focus time and energy on maintaining this. Because odamex tries to maintain vanilla compatibility, not handling this demo correctly this would be a bug in their program.

Thanks for definitive clarification about the "swingshots", Jkist3. Now really understand this intriguing thing I have read at Devastation's Guide. :D

I now really understand how RAW was the doom2.exe, lol. But now I just have one more single doubt. It is about the initial spawns the map01 and green/indigo players, in multiplayer.
I have realized, after seeing so many old demos that players with certain colors always born at the same spawn point. Green always spawns on the ledge of 3 weapons(BFG, SSG and RL) and indigo always spawns in front of Chaingun. Interestingly, in Doom2.exe, the spawns are random during the game, but did not know they were always pre-determined early matches(initial spawns). But my question is: what determines a player to come be green(player 1) or indigo(player 2)? It's about who enters the first in the server? lol, it's funny!

Regarding the issue of the compatibility of the demos in modern ports, I think I found a bug in Odamex since it was created to be as vanilla as possible. Or maybe not, I think maybe this is not the intention of having Odamex sync with LMP demos. Who knows? I just think the biggest nonsense about customers about Doom is the incompatibility between them!They should be universair as are the customers of any quake, meaning they are compatible among themselves. For example: a player using Odamex could go into zandronum or zdaemon servers. This incompatibility only divides communities. :(

thank you all, dudes! ;)

Lejionator said:

Thanks for definitive clarification about the "swingshots", Jkist3. Now really understand this intriguing thing I have read at Devastation's Guide. :D

I now really understand how RAW was the doom2.exe, lol. But now I just have one more single doubt. It is about the initial spawns the map01 and green/indigo players, in multiplayer.
I have realized, after seeing so many old demos that players with certain colors always born at the same spawn point. Green always spawns on the ledge of 3 weapons(BFG, SSG and RL) and indigo always spawns in front of Chaingun. Interestingly, in Doom2.exe, the spawns are random during the game, but did not know they were always pre-determined early matches(initial spawns). But my question is: what determines a player to come be green(player 1) or indigo(player 2)? It's about who enters the first in the server? lol, it's funny!

In doom2.exe you can specify by command before the game starts who gets assigned which color. As you may or may not know a specific color will have an advantage over the other in doom2.exe due to spawns and lag. On lan indigo is lagged, while over the internet green is lagged a lot more than indigo. Also, in entryway map01, green gets the much better starting spawn and as a result starts off in control or with a frag run or both. As you can see in old demos between 2 high level players, green will usually win on lan. Originally people played to a 100 frag limit because this was as high as the in game frag counter could go. As games got more competitive a new standard was made: instead of 1 game to 100 they played 2 games to 50 with each player switching colors to make it an actual fair contest. This is the reason the current competitive standard is a 50 fraglimit. After modern source ports came out and eliminated the color advantage the 2nd game to 50 was no longer needed for a fair fight and was dropped.

Lejionator said:

Regarding the issue of the compatibility of the demos in modern ports, I think I found a bug in Odamex since it was created to be as vanilla as possible. Or maybe not, I think maybe this is not the intention of having Odamex sync with LMP demos. Who knows?

I agree this is most likely a bug you found with odamex.

Lejionator said:

I just think the biggest nonsense about customers about Doom is the incompatibility between them!They should be universair as are the customers of any quake, meaning they are compatible among themselves. For example: a player using Odamex could go into zandronum or zdaemon servers. This incompatibility only divides communities. :(

This would be nice. The issue is that unlike quake, doom wasn’t released with a client/server model, so these multiplayer projects have to code their own. They wont all be coded the same way, so the resulting ports will be incompatible. For everything to be compatible the ports would all have had to fork from a single multiplayer port, not implement their own client/server approach.