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Crusader No Regret

What does Zdoom do better than GzDoom?

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  So on the surface, it appears GzDoom is a flat-out superior port.  Runs more stuff and is still actively supported.  I'm curious if there's something which Zdoom is better at.  I hear it maintains a more stable framerate with Ancient Alines, so that's one; anything else?

 

(context: new system and I want to keep down the clutter so would rather only install one Zdoom-based port)

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Technically, there is no advantage in installing ZDoom over GZDoom because the latter has everything included that ZDoom has. Only exception to this is very old machines that ran faster with the assembly drawers. They will be better off using ZDoom LE (Legacy Edition), or possible older builds of ZDoom.

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It doesn't do OpenGL better, obviously. :'D

 

I would say that ZDoom is mostly superior in regards to running certain old mods and games.

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I have been running ZDoom for about  1.5 years on an old linux box with not much hardware support. I tried GZDoom, and found it to be a bit laggy, but when I disabled OpenGL it seems to run fine -- even when there are 1000+ monsters active.

 

GZDoom probably is a flat-out superior port.

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GZDoom built on ZDoom, so there isn't really anything ZDoom does better.

 

The next version of GZDoom, once QZDoom is merged with it, will even have a vastly superior software renderer as well.

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If you run GZDoom in software mode, you're essentially running ZDoom.

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35 minutes ago, Bauul said:

GZDoom built on ZDoom, so there isn't really anything ZDoom does better.

 

The next version of GZDoom, once QZDoom is merged with it, will even have a vastly superior software renderer as well.

The merge has already been done, the devbuilds contain all that code.

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15 hours ago, dpJudas said:

Technically, there is no advantage in installing ZDoom over GZDoom

There is a huge one. How software rendering handles sprites. One could argue that the differences in lighting can't be said to be good or bad, but the sprites are slightly superior in the software renderer, if only because the left case there is less noticeable than the right one. Revenants in particular can get real silly.

 

clipping2.png

clipping.png

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23 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

There is a huge one. How software rendering handles sprites.

That would indeed be a huge advantage if GZDoom didn't have the software renderer, but GZDoom does have the ZDoom software available, which you can use, so if you want software rendering you can use software rendering in GZDoom. Because GZDoom has software rendering.

 

CUOUlJ8.png

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1 hour ago, Albertoni said:

There is a huge one. How software rendering handles sprites. One could argue that the differences in lighting can't be said to be good or bad, but the sprites are slightly superior in the software renderer, if only because the left case there is less noticeable than the right one. Revenants in particular can get real silly.

 

 

I'm tempted to post a counterexample of the software renderer totally fucking up sprite display, but I am too lazy to play long enough to get a good screenshot.

 

To sum it up: Both renderers have their strengths and their weaknesses, and with both you can get into situations where you do not see what you are supposed to see.

 

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1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

Someone has like every iwad.

Believe it or not, we are True Doomers! :D

The box is too small to list all the 25 entries in the list, so you only see a small section.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

The merge has already been done, the devbuilds contain all that code.

True, I just meant that if OP goes and downloads the latest full release of GZDoom it doesn't have QZDoom in yet.  Unless he's happy to risk it on the devbuilds.

 

It's going to be a weird happy world when just one sourceport has both the arguably best hardware and best software renderer in one single release.

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So, QZDoom has (or will have) a better software renderer than ZDoom.  Does that mean that system requirements are higher or is the renderer more effecient?

 

The reason I ask is that I mainly play Doom on my netbook which has an ATI C60 processor.  ZDoom runs okay on it but GZDoom just cripples the poor wee thing.

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4 hours ago, Albertoni said:

There is a huge one. How software rendering handles sprites. One could argue that the differences in lighting can't be said to be good or bad, but the sprites are slightly superior in the software renderer, if only because the left case there is less noticeable than the right one. Revenants in particular can get real silly.

If you made the image for this thread I'm impressed by the effort you went to.

 

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

I'm tempted to post a counterexample of the software renderer totally fucking up sprite display, but I am too lazy to play long enough to get a good screenshot.

That's a shame, I would have been interested to see it!

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The new software renderer can do dynamic lights and true color - and it uses multithreading to improve performance.

Of course the multithreading support inevitably means that on ancient single core CPUs it will be slower than the old one in ZDoom because there has to be some overhead to prepare the data which on a single core CPU cannot be compensated by doing the real work on multiple cores.

 

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Give it a try!  It's the only way to know for sure.  And to clarify, QZDoom already does, but the next major GZDoom release will have QZDoom's software renderer merged in too.

 

I'm not sure about behind the scenes things, but on my old Intel laptop CPU with integrated graphics, the hardware renderer chugs along at around 20-30fps, whereas QZDoom's software renderer (even with true color and dynamic lighting activated) holds an unbreaking 60fps (which is as fast as my laptop screen refreshes).  Turning on true non-distorting free-look does hit the framerate though, so I tend to leave that off.

 

Really, QZDoom has become my go-to experience for Doom.  It runs like a hot knife through butter and having things like dynamic lights in software mode is particularly awesome.

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1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

The new software renderer can do dynamic lights and true color - and it uses multithreading to improve performance.

Of course the multithreading support inevitably means that on ancient single core CPUs it will be slower than the old one in ZDoom because there has to be some overhead to prepare the data which on a single core CPU cannot be compensated by doing the real work on multiple cores.

 

Will the old color palette mode be removed? Because with my crappy laptop that's the only way I can play smoothly. The GPU isn't strong enough to use Hardware Rendering at a steady framerate, and the CPU won't allow truecolor in Software Rendering at anything more than 25 fps.

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28 minutes ago, RjY said:

That's a shame, I would have been interested to see it!

A classic example is when you have some columns of the sprite that are clipped, and others that aren't. MAP01 of Plutonia 2 is a good place to get that phenomenon.

 

Look at that guy's corpse. The right foot is cut off mysteriously.
 

Spoiler


XqClpMw.png

52g0y9S.png

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Of course the multithreading support inevitably means that on ancient single core CPUs it will be slower than the old one in ZDoom because there has to be some overhead to prepare the data which on a single core CPU cannot be compensated by doing the real work on multiple cores.

 

Which would be the most optimized port (gzdoom or qzdoom) for a AMD Athlon II (x2 (dual core))? I have a heavily bottlenecked GTX570 GPU. 6G of DDR3.

 

I currently use GZDoom 2.4 and don't notice problems unless I'm playing something really busy.

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14 minutes ago, Gez said:

A classic example is when you have some columns of the sprite that are clipped, and others that aren't. MAP01 of Plutonia 2 is a good place to get that phenomenon.

 

Look at that guy's corpse. The right foot is cut off mysteriously.
[...]

Ah, of course. Where there's no visplane to clip against, or something. Should've remembered that. Thanks.

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34 minutes ago, Gez said:

A classic example is when you have some columns of the sprite that are clipped, and others that aren't. MAP01 of Plutonia 2 is a good place to get that phenomenon.

 

Look at that guy's corpse. The right foot is cut off mysteriously.
 

 

The one I once had showed a far more extreme variation of that effect where some monsters were sliced into 3 or 4 separate pieces by a section of rails in a map from Caverns of Darkness. Unfortunately I lost that image some time ago.

 

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25 minutes ago, everennui said:

Which would be the most optimized port (gzdoom or qzdoom) for a AMD Athlon II (x2 (dual core))? I have a heavily bottlenecked GTX570 GPU. 6G of DDR3.

 

I currently use GZDoom 2.4 and don't notice problems unless I'm playing something really busy.

With that GPU OpenGL will always be more performant. I got a Geforce 550Ti and even the 4xCore CPU I have cannot make up for it on more detailed maps.

For the software renderer to be faster you need some considerably weaker graphics hardware. For example, the integrated Intel HD4000 in my CPU can't keep up with the multithreaded software renderer, unless using some killer maps like Frozen Time.

 

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Wow! My CPU at this point is just there because I need one. I was fortunate enough to find the 570 on Craigslist for $40!!

 

I think using hardware allows me to get a somewhat tolerable capture with OBS more so than software which kind of confused me.

 

So if I understand this correctly, OGL just uses my GPU and software just uses my CPU?

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5 hours ago, Gez said:

GZDoom does have the ZDoom software available.

Is that a new addition? My GZDoom (2.2.0) only offers me a choice of IWAD.

 

But yeah, Graf is correct. Both have their bugs. I just get way more irked by ceilings eating heads than by the few software mode bugs (maybe because I'm used to them by now).

 

As for a slightly extreme example of the software renderer eating a brain pizza-slice, just because I had it saved:

Spoiler

photo_2017-04-14_20-41-07.jpg.2d1ebbc41cb8df14b040e3c4be4e6ff1.jpg

 

9 minutes ago, everennui said:

So if I understand this correctly, OGL just uses my GPU and software just uses my CPU?

In short, yes, you can safely assume that.

If you want to get technical, OpenGL is like 98% GPU and 2% CPU (this one can vary a lot), while software is like 99% CPU and 1% GPU. You always have to process the data a bit in the CPU before passing it to the GPU, and the GPU always has to draw the window.

Edited by Albertoni

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23 minutes ago, Albertoni said:

Is that a new addition? My GZDoom (2.2.0) only offers me a choice of IWAD.

Yes and no. The option on the startup box is new; the software renderer in GZDoom has been there from the very start.

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6 hours ago, KVELLER said:

Will the old color palette mode be removed? Because with my crappy laptop that's the only way I can play smoothly. The GPU isn't strong enough to use Hardware Rendering at a steady framerate, and the CPU won't allow truecolor in Software Rendering at anything more than 25 fps.

I would be extremely surprised if they removed the paletted mode. It's a visual style a lot of people still prefer to play Doom in.

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14 hours ago, Bauul said:

I would be extremely surprised if they removed the paletted mode. It's a visual style a lot of people still prefer to play Doom in.

I don't know why I didn't think about that.

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