Brutal Doom wins mod of the year on Mod DB

2 hours ago, yakfak said:

can someone gimme a list of vanilla stuff that gets noticeably changed in a gameplay way by Brutal Doom?

I must admit, I like BD and its derivatives for the ammount of player->weapon->enemy interaction feedback they give, i.e. shooting enemies with various guns at various bodyparts have different but predictable and controllable effect on them, but I also greately dislike all the audiovisual clutter that accompanies it.

Idieally, I wish there was a "neutered" version of BD and BD_monsters_only addon with only hitbox and death animations simplified as much as possible, without any extra scripts, smoke, blood spawns etc. @Sergeant_Mark_IV if you read it, please consider doing such a version, I, and I'm sure many other players would be grateful.

 

So here's a few things I noticed BD totally breaks: 

1) Monster teleports. Actual vanilla are mostly fine, but vanilla and boom-compatible maps with greater monster counts that rely on teleporting a lot of enemies at once will face an issue where some monsters do not go into the teleporters once disturbed by gunfire, delivered to them through soundchannel tricks.

This causes some encounters to "underdeliver" and make 100% the level impossible due to monsters unwilling to go out of their pens. Happens fairly often on Plutonia 2 as it has a lot of monster teleportation that was done this way.

It's doubly worse if the monsters are required to be defeated for progression - then you get stuck for good.

2) Teleportation sometimes sends entities into the walls and out of bounds due to the way BD entities interact with each other upon collision. This again can lead to required enemies becoming unreachable.

3) The opposite of the (1). Some times enemies get riled up way before they meet the player, and due to the way they behave in BD, sometimes start infighting among themselves, so when player arrives to the supposed encounter , half of it is already dead.

Again, this may break the progression, and does so in Scythe 1/2 where in some levels a map-wide infight starts as soon as players gets in.

4) Boom and not Vanilla: Voodoo Doll scripting is prone to get broken due to the way Player actor (and by extent a Voodoo doll) get altered - it may not activate the lines it should, or may activate them too early in some cases, breaking and altering progression in ways like: part of the stairs not rising, switch not triggering, part of the combination not working, levels ending prematurely. Combine teleporting conveyor belted, bugged up Voodoo Doll with issue (2) and you get a recepie for disaster, like Voodoo doll getting a small chance of going out of bounds completely disabling any scripts that were reliant on it. In Scythe 2 certain maps have a chance of autofinishing themselves in 20-30 seconds due to Voodoo Doll going commando, courtesy of BD.

5)Monsters having additional hitbox actors attached to them, and having their own properties altered may make them spawn in the wrong way or get pushed in the wrong way. Good example of that is column-type monster closets that have space above them. If they fit just-right in vanilla, they might be unfitting in BD and spawn enemy outside or on top of it. Happens sometimes to 2 cyberdemonds on one of the final maps of Plutonia 2 for example.

 

That's all I can remember off the top of my head, but surely not everything there is.

 

Things BD heavily alters:

1) Weapon balance ofc. Every weapon becomes a "viable choice", combined with headshots even accidental ones makes the game considerably more lenient of hte ammo balance department. Basically put - you don't need as many ammo to deal with same ammount of enemies, and even on maps with tight ammo balance player reserves tend to get stockpiled where they otherwise shouldn't be.

2) Enemies lingering about in "dying" animation, soaking up additional bullets and rockets from both sides and crippling gunfights to an extent.

3) Hitscanners hit heavier and more accurately, which makes many classic shotgunner/chaingunner traps to be a lot more frustrating and unfair, in some cases delivering an instant death due to volume of fire taking down 300+ hp per second and making encounters unwinnable (plutonia 1/2, scythes, numerous other wads)

4) Spider Mastermind is not hitscan anymore, which makes him easier to avoid at longer ranges, while making him deadlier at short range. His Hitbox is somewhat buggy as well, some times making shots go right through it and in other cases counting BFG/rocket shots as headshots, killing him much faster than he should go (this also relates to CyberDemon).

5) Extreme ammounts of audiovisual clutter that does not go away even on most conservative settings and hinders player's capability of assissing the combat situation properly.

 

And many other things.

TL;DR: BD alters how literally everything works and any map with any sort of complexity to it has a chance to get broken.

 

 

Regarding the CPU useage bomb.

1) Many people here seem to think that it's about combining BD with PB as mods, which obviously won't work anyway, while in fact it is about running Makr's new map pack with PB, which otherwise would work and play just fine, if not for the script present.

This makes it a different issue from what TerminusEst did: his mod is totally incompatible with BD due to both mods reliant on enemy replacement. Spawming monsters in an unintended manner to assault a player is just a form of visual on-hand demonstration of the issue.

Mark however prevents a gameplay mod being played on his map, which would otherwise totally work.

 

2)Many people here don't seem to understand that "50% cpu useage" is in fact "100% Core 1 useage", and a lot of system stuff is usually relegated to that core. There's also a difference between "formally used, but can be relieved any time for higher priority tasks" and "totally used and unavailable to anything else, since what it does now IS considered a top priority" cpu useage. Such rapid spike in CPU useage can totally BSOD a weaker PC like older dualcores that would otherwise have no problem with running GZDoom mods, or render PC unuseable until hard reset is performed.

I speak from personal experience, as I had this happen to one of my older rigs, though in a different scenario (Russian overkill) - while in those cases crash was achieved unintentionally from modders side and is only encountered when certain conditions are met, Mark's intentions on this matter are completely clear.

 

 

27 minutes ago, Lampenpam said:

Aren't the credits displayed in the background plus also in a txt file? :I Might be subjective, but imo that's quite obvious seeing all credits in the menu. 

Not in the TXT file. Not on the F1 screen.

The credits are given ONLY in the Brutal Doom Options->Resource Credits submenu. And they are given under "contributors" premise which implies that they have willingly given their stuff  (which they didn't) to Sgt_Mark when he asked them for permission (which he didn't).

Edited January 3, 2018 by Sinael

16 hours ago, TerminusEst13 said:

Mark is. He's explicitly stated on his Patreon he wants to turn Doom modding into a full-time job. That's cool, I'm glad a Doomer can do that in Current Year, best of luck to him. But if he's going to want to make $$$$$$$$ using some of my work, I think it's only fair that he tells people what's actually mine. That's not a problem, right?

I am sorry, i have to reply to this and open some eyes, Modding is NOT A JOB! it is a hobby and one should not gain profit from other people's work , no matter how much content s/he added with said mod, one can use modding to gain a rep for himself/herself and use gained reputation to :

1.)add it to your CV and look for a job.

2.)Start a new project of your own, stand on your own damn feet and charge money once your product goes gold.

 

Of course SgtMark can do as he desires and people are more than welcomed to pay him, but don't mislead the guy, He will never be able to sustain himself as a modder by accepting donations and he should look for a job if he doesn't have one, like the rest of the population that still believes in capitalism.

 

Also living from donations, even in crypto presents issues such as gaining benefits, taxation (patreon way still require a tax consultant),  being registered as an employee in your state (being a modder is not exactly an independent contractor/freelancer).

________________________________________________

 

EDIT : Want to "Work" as a modder with patreon and such?

Good luck having trust of any kind.

Good luck with your pension.

Good luck with paying your premiums such as health insurance and alike.

Good luck with not being registered in your country as a worker, see how it affects your social security or its national equivalent.

Good luck getting a loan.

Good luck getting mortgage.

You can forget about someone representing you eventhough i hate unions.

You don't get privileges that a company may offer by accessing the company's lawyer and accountist.

^^

If you are a business owner, its different, But a modder isn't a business owner due to its nature of modding an existing product.

If you remove all the assets from an open source engine like id-tech 1/zdoom/gzdoom , congratz, you are a game developer.

But SgtMark is a modder, he can't own a business, he can't be audited.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Illasera : After-thought

12 minutes ago, Sinael said:

2)Many people here don't seem to understand that "50% cpu useage" is in fact "100% Core 1 useage", and a lot of system stuff is usually relegated to that core. There's also a difference between "formally used, but can be relieved any time for higher priority tasks" and "totally used and unavailable to anything else, since what it does now IS considered a top priority" cpu useage. Such rapid spike in CPU useage can totally BSOD a weaker PC like older dualcores that would otherwise have no problem with running GZDoom mods, or render PC unuseable until hard reset is performed.

I speak from personal experience, as I had this happen to one of my older rigs, though in a different scenario (Russian overkill) - while in those cases crash was achieved unintentionally from modders side and is only encountered when certain conditions are met, Mark's intentions on this matter are completely clear.

 

 

And, again, how is this any different than Nuts.wad, which everyone agrees is acceptable?  Unless you think that BPRD thought that Nuts was going to run well when he released it in the '90s...

8 minutes ago, Illasera said:

I am sorry, i have to reply to this and open some eyes, Modding is NOT A JOB!

Somebody get this actual real world life experience wisdom out of our shit parade. What do you think we are? Normal?

As for Brutal Doom itself, my only real gripe with Brutal Doom is that mechanic where enemies are in a half-dead state, I don't feel it adds anything and it just breaks the flow of play. Say, Mark, any chance you could include an option to disable it and just have enemies consistently die like they would in Vanilla Doom?

Just now, Cynical said:

And, again, how is this any different than Nuts.wad, which everyone agrees is acceptable?  Unless you think that BPRD thought that Nuts was going to run well when he released it in the '90s...

Nuts.wad was totally possible on Boom at the time. At crawling pace, but still. And it does not crash or BSOD, not even once as I tried it in numerous configuratons. Also when you are running it, you totally expect what is coming.

In Mark's case a mod and a mapset were made specifically to crash GZD purely because he wished it so.

1 hour ago, Da Werecat said:

Maybe you should check some other threads.

 

Then again, in most other threads there's not much opportunity for posturing.

If you can't detect the problem, you are most likely part of it. I'm starting to wonder why you haven't switched your cat for an anime girl yet.

31 minutes ago, MetroidJunkie said:

As for Brutal Doom itself, my only real gripe with Brutal Doom is that mechanic where enemies are in a half-dead state, I don't feel it adds anything and it just breaks the flow of play. Say, Mark, any chance you could include an option to disable it and just have enemies consistently die like they would in Vanilla Doom?

 

A much bigger problem is that when you play the game in purist mode wit no mouse aim some weapons like the SSG will mess up your aim so you aren't pointing at the center of the screen anymore. This also happens in BD 64. It can also happen when some monsters like the lost soul attack. It completely breaks the game if you aren't playing with mouse aim on.

46 minutes ago, Sinael said:

The credits are given ONLY in the Brutal Doom Options->Resource Credits submenu.

wrong, they appear in the main menu, test it yourself. however its broken in the beta and displays a missing texture, not a huge deal for a beta imo. For the lack of permission I'd like to see some source.

4 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

A much bigger problem is that when you play the game in purist mode wit no mouse aim some weapons like the SSG will mess up your aim so you aren't pointing at the center of the screen anymore. This also happens in BD 64. It can also happen when some monsters like the lost soul attack. It completely breaks the game if you aren't playing with mouse aim on.

I've never had that problem since I just default to using mouse aim these days.

48 minutes ago, TerminusEst13 said:

He's explicitly stated on his Patreon he wants to turn Doom modding into a full-time job.

Doom modding or crashing innocent-users sourceports? That’s the thing about it: some people have actually donated to this guy and here he goes injecting malicious code that freezes your port or possibly your PC.

if it was just a joke then why did he remove the source code? Was he never going to mention this so-called joke if no one had brought it to light?

 

The guy is just to shady to trust anymore. We already knew he stole and didn’t credit resources, now the new thing will be if his mods crash your game or not.

 

Mod of the year oops?

4 minutes ago, jdagenet said:

possibly your PC.

 

It doesn't crash your PC at all. How many times does this need to be explained here? it only crashes the engine. Or to be more specific, it freezes the engine like playing nuts.wad with burtal doom. 

Just to play Devil's Advocate, Nuts.Wad has a set amount of enemies. Yes, it's infamously straining due to the nature of it but wouldn't an infinitely spawning actor endlessly creating copies of itself every single tic be slightly more extreme than even Nuts? Ironically, Vanilla apparently ran Nuts just fine since it hard limits the visible sprites.

that wasn't my point, MetroidJunky. I just wanted to give an example on what happens when you stress out GZDoom too much. Play nuts with BD or any other demanding monster/gameplay mod and gzdoom slows down the point of freezing. It doesn't freeze your PC though. 

20 hours ago, Rachael said:

You want to know the best thing to do in that case, Mark, when you can't find who made something?

 

Don't use it.

Ah man, I can't disagree with you. But I still have an issue with it.

 

There are lots of resources floating around with artist abandoning them or no one making good use with their work. I believe if someone gets free access to them all and make the best content they can without hindrance they can make great mods.

 

As selfish as it is, I would prefer Mark to have taken the unknown author's work and use it to create BD as it is today even if this makes him ethically questionable as oppose to creating a lesser BD mod. But don't get me wrong, some of the content he straight out took are very significant with authors more easily identified from the get go, so that was poor form. But for the very difficult authors to find... don't lock it away with no use, that's not good for Doom.

 

If I was in Mark's position, I would have considered creating a far more detailed list of credits and when it comes to unknown author content, create a request for the people to reach out to you so it can be filled in. Considering the exposure BD gets, its a system that can definitely work.

17 minutes ago, Chezza said:

Ah man, I can't disagree with you. But I still have an issue with it.

 

There are lots of resources floating around with artist abandoning them or no one making good use with their work. I believe if someone gets free access to them all and make the best content they can without hindrance they can make great mods.

 

As selfish as it is, I would prefer Mark to have taken the unknown author's work and use it to create BD as it is today even if this makes him ethically questionable as oppose to creating a lesser BD mod. But don't get me wrong, some of the content he straight out took are very significant with authors more easily identified from the get go, so that was poor form. But for the very difficult authors to find... don't lock it away with no use, that's not good for Doom.

 

If I was in Mark's position, I would have considered creating a far more detailed list of credits and when it comes to unknown author content, create a request for the people to reach out to you so it can be filled in. Considering the exposure BD gets, its a system that can definitely work.

I feel as if attitude is a strong indicator of intent, here. When using someone else's assets without having specifically asked them first, detailed credits are good, indicating who exactly is responsible for what exactly. If that's not possible, for example if you just don't know who made a given resource, there is no shame in asking people if they can identify it. Where I see problems with BD's handling of it is that the list of credits is just a big ol' pile of names, so if I wanted to know what part of the mod SomeHypotheticalGuy994 made, I'd have to go talk to them or the mod's author to find it out. Which makes the mod a dead-end as far as recycling/reuse of community resources goes, because it's not necessarily likely that either author may still be around in the future to be able to give that information.

 

Further, when I posted earlier about wanting to congratulate everybody whose work made BD possible, especially the ones that weren't credited, the very first person to reply to that was Sarge himself, in a manner that made it sound as if I was lying to him, even falsely accusing him of not giving credit where it was due. Say what you will about my approach here, but if Sarge had made an honest mistake and accidentally left a person or two out of the credits, I'd suppose he'd have put it more in the way of, "Oops, I must have forgotten, could you let me know so I can fix it?" instead of "I'd sure like to see you prove that I'm leaving anything out." Followed, not long after, by him accusing someone else of stealing resources from him, with no tangible evidence on his end either. What does that say about him?

1 hour ago, Illasera said:

Of course SgtMark can do as he desires and people are more than welcomed to pay him, but don't mislead the guy, He will never be able to sustain himself as a modder by accepting donations and he should look for a job if he doesn't have one, like the rest of the population that still believes in capitalism.

The world is changing. Traditional jobs that so many people worship and would like to worship as being "the only way to do things" are gradually but increasingly becoming a relic of the past. People are increasingly finding ways to employ themselves, and for many people it actually is the only means by which they can survive. Many people can't do the 9-5's like you think everyone "should" be doing.

 

Say what you will about Sgt Mark, but 9-5's are a cancer in our society that we would be better off without. For all the shit Sgt Mark does wrong, for all the people he's hurt over the years, he's got the "getting myself food" part right - sorry but 9-5's are awful and should be avoided in any way possible if a person can do so.

1 hour ago, Lampenpam said:

 

It doesn't crash your PC at all. How many times does this need to be explained here? it only crashes the engine. Or to be more specific, it freezes the engine like playing nuts.wad with burtal doom. 

 

Anecdotal, but I've had Flash professional give me a BSOD when it should of just froze and let me force quit it. This was on a project of my own, so no, it wasn't some fishy flash app I downloaded, it was my own code and I made a mistake in it. So it's not entirely out of the question there is some special circumstances that gzdoom can take an entire system down with it. No I'm not saying what Mark wrote was going to cause any real damage, but the argument of "everyone's system is different" is perfectly valid.

 

50 minutes ago, wildweasel said:

"Oops, I must have forgotten, could you let me know so I can fix it?" instead of "I'd sure like to see you prove that I'm leaving anything out." Followed, not long after, by him accusing someone else of stealing resources from him, with no tangible evidence on his end either. What does that say about him?

 

Which goes to my earlier post where I called him out for his inability to acknowledge his behavior as negative (and interestingly enough hasn't responded to it). Is anyone actually upset that assets are being stolen? No not really, there's nothing you can do about it, that's the nature of the beast. It's this attitude of "No fuck you I didn't steal anything", "It's a fucking mod, get over it", "You should be thankful I'm even using your stuff", "Of course I put their names in, it's in the fine print!". That's the attitude towards this that everyone has gotten sick of. It's complete disregard of the fact that modding takes time and effort, something he ironically wants people to acknowledge from him (source), yet doesn't want to even return the favor in a way that's actually respectable to the creators he built his work on. No, just putting in a name is not really enough. You don't watch the credits of a movie just to have a list of names shown to you, you want to know who were the set designers, audio engineers, makeup, the dude who bought everyone coffee, and even the god damn pet goldfish stunt double #3 of scene #12 everyone loved watching swim through the hoops.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Kevansevans

36 minutes ago, Kevansevans said:

Anecdotal, but I've had Flash professional give me a BSOD when it should of just froze and let me force quit it. This was on a project of my own, so no, it wasn't some fishy flash app I downloaded, it was my own code and I made a mistake in it. So it's not entirely out of the question there is some special circumstances that gzdoom can take an entire system down with it. No I'm not saying what Mark wrote was going to cause any real damage, but the argument of "everyone's system is different" is perfectly valid.

Except that's not how a modern operating system functions at all. Try as you might, you cannot crash a computer from user level code alone, you need to interact with the kernel at some point to do so, and GZDoom is not a driver. Outside of some particularly egregious examples of course (if anybody wants to point out x86 exploits), but GZDoom doesn't function like that.

 

... Or at least damn well shouldn't be.

 

Now you might be wondering what happened with Flash then. The usual culprits are hardware failure (for example, RAM failure, even on high and normally unused locations), device failure (GPU overheating, drivers tripping balls), or even striking completely unrelated issues that just happened at inopportune times, such as the BUS fucking up and losing the hard-drive.

However none of this allows for just one over-aggressive program just soaking user space operations and RAM to cause any kind of system critical issue.

 

It is also is not the problem that was being discussed. The program can soak as many cycles as it wants, however you shouldn't prevent the user from responding, which is the issue here with soaking GZDoom's actor pool and VMs.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Edward850

2 hours ago, Illasera said:

I am sorry, i have to reply to this and open some eyes, Modding is NOT A JOB! it is a hobby

Welcome to the real world where freelancers, kickstarters and patreon\commisions actually exist! Yes it is harder to get started than working for a company but I highly doubt he decided to just quit his previous job and start modding overnight.

2 hours ago, Illasera said:

I am sorry, i have to reply to this and open some eyes, Modding is NOT A JOB! it is a hobby and one should not gain profit from other people's work , no matter how much content s/he added with said mod, one can use modding to gain a rep for himself/herself and use gained reputation to :

1.)add it to your CV and look for a job.

2.)Start a new project of your own, stand on your own damn feet and charge money once your product goes gold.

 

What qualifies as job and what doesn't is, thank goodness, subject to the eye of the beholder. The moment people turn their hobby into their profession, which they can hopefully live of, it's a job. The moment a soccer player signs a several million dollar deal with a club, playing soccer is a job, not a hobby. The moment somebody who loves to paint abstract pictures can sell them to live off of that kind of "hobby", it's a job. The moment somebody can make a living off of streaming/YouTube/etc, it's a job.

 

The actual question is for how long it can be a job, because eventually people may or may not loose interest, but that doesn't enter into what's a job and what isn't. Also, I'm not saying your ideas aren't good in and of themselves, but Mark_IV wouldn't be the first person to be able live off of modding an existing game.

25 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Except that's not how a modern operating system functions at all. Try as you might, you cannot crash a computer from user level code alone, you need to interact with the kernel at some point to do so.

Funny you say that.

Just today one Unreal Engine 4 game called Guilty Gear Xrd has managed to BSOD my PC twice. I'm pretty sure it did not had the access to the kernel in any way.

 

3 hours ago, Illasera said:

Modding is NOT A JOB!

"Professional Whiner" is a job now. I don't see why modding can't be. It's totally fine... Until someone starts to profit off of other people's work.

IMO Sgt. Mark  should've cleaned up the house and made sure to use only his own resources and eforts before going commercial. Even with the theoretical crediting of all the willing and unwilling contributors, I still find it extremely dishonest and detestable that he took money for something that contains work by other people that do not receive monetary compensation for their "contributions".

 

On other note, Modding is a job only until a big company DMCAs you and shuts your patreon down.

 

2 hours ago, Lampenpam said:

wrong, they appear in the main menu, test it yourself. however its broken in the beta and displays a missing texture, not a huge deal for a beta imo.

"It's okay since they totally appear in the menu!... Menu is broken btw."

And still even on that splash screen hiden away in the inmost dens of the mod's directories, there's no mention of Terminus and quite a few other people, and those that are mentioned are listed as willing contributors.

2 hours ago, Lampenpam said:

 For the lack of permission I'd like to see some source.

There are few people in there that EXPLICITLY did not gave any permisions to use their work for profit, which is what Sgt.Mark does now, one of them is present ITT and clearly states so.

Even if Mark only used assets he made himself, he's still using a clearly modified Doom experience to do it, complete with modified sprites directly from Doom. If he actually tried to put a price on it, id Software and Zenimax probably wouldn't be too happy about it.

Just now, MetroidJunkie said:

Even if Mark only used assets he made himself, he's still using a clearly modified Doom experience to do it, complete with modified sprites directly from Doom. If he actually tried to put a price on it, id Software and Zenimax probably wouldn't be too happy about it.

Yet here we are.

What I fear is for BD to make a big enouhg splash to attract publishers attention to Mark's patreon which coult totally lead to a precedent of a DMCA on a Doom mod (there's ben a few examples of that recently in other games), which will obviously impact the rest of us.

Well, a willful donation isn't the same as a mandatory price. Donations have more legal leeway, kind of like monetizing a video on Youtube with ads. The consumer isn't the one paying, so there's more flexibility and far less likely to be sued over.

44 minutes ago, Sinael said:

Funny you say that.

Just today one Unreal Engine 4 game called Guilty Gear Xrd has managed to BSOD my PC twice. I'm pretty sure it did not had the access to the kernel in any way.

Unless you go back to Windows 98 or DOS, what I said is how it is, in the same way water is wet and the sun is hot. All operations on a modern memory protected operating system are split up into two levels of tasks: Kernel level and user level, and a user level program cannot interact directly with the kernel process, yet it is the kernel that triggers a BSOD. For Windows, this is how it's been since the beginning of NT.

 

Again, see my previous notes:

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

Now you might be wondering what happened with Flash then. The usual culprits are hardware failure (for example, RAM failure, even on high and normally unused locations), device failure (GPU overheating, drivers tripping balls), or even striking completely unrelated issues that just happened at inopportune times, such as the BUS fucking up and losing the hard-drive.

However none of this allows for just one over-aggressive program just soaking user space operations and RAM to cause any kind of system critical issue.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2018 by Edward850

36 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Except that's not how a modern operating system functions at all. Try as you might, you cannot crash a computer from user level code alone, you need to interact with the kernel at some point to do so, and GZDoom is not a driver. Outside of some particularly egregious examples of course (if anybody wants to point out x86 exploits), but GZDoom doesn't function like that.

 

... Or at least damn well shouldn't be.

 

Now you might be wondering what happened with Flash then. The usual culprits are hardware failure (for example, RAM failure, even on high and normally unused locations), device failure (GPU overheating, drivers tripping balls), or even striking completely unrelated issues that just happened at inopportune times, such as the BUS fucking up and losing the hard-drive.

However none of this allows for just one over-aggressive program just soaking user space operations and RAM to cause any kind of system critical issue.

 

It is also is not the problem that was being discussed. The program can soak as many cycles as it wants, however you shouldn't prevent the user from responding, which is the issue here with soaking GZDoom's actor pool and VMs.

Admittedly all of my programming experience is in Linux not Windows, but I was under the impression that DirectX was part of the Windows kernel since Vista, and thus you could crash the OS with bad/malicious DirectX API calls?

 

Not saying GZDoom or GGXXrd do that (it would be highly unlikely), but it would be a possibility to do it in user-space code without using x86 exploits.

30 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

 

but Mark_IV wouldn't be the first person to be able live off of modding an existing game.

But sure as f*ck he is the first one living off of modding in Brazil, a country struggling with economical inequality. And thats another pro for him, he deserves a bit of respect for turning his hobby into a job. So he can complete those FREE projects in less time and more quality. Now if BD was on Steam that would be another completely different story.

16 minutes ago, Cynical said:

Admittedly all of my programming experience is in Linux not Windows, but I was under the impression that DirectX was part of the Windows kernel since Vista, and thus you could crash the OS with bad/malicious DirectX API calls?

Nope, that's not the case. You can communicate with the kernel indirectly using the Windows API (you'll sometimes see things related to it like kernel32.dll), but only drivers can talk with it directly. You can communicate with graphics drivers using the DirectX API, and they in turn can interact with the kernel, but your game will never interact with the kernel itself. DirectX itself is just a sub-component of Windows for all intents and purposes.

 

You could set up some kind of kernel panic by crashing the graphics driver using a bad set of DirectX commands, but its worth pointing out that during development of Kex3's DirectX11 RHI, some of its more outrageous bugs such as feeding a vertex buffer and bad memory location never caused any such issue. It would be particularly complicated to cause such an issue outside of a fundamental bug in the graphics driver itself.

 

As a final anecdote, it's worth noting that Vulkan implementations at the moment are known for this. This is to be expected somewhat due to just what Vulkan is and it being still early days of its implementation for GPUs currently. However I can't really answer just what and how much. It is, however, still a driver level problem, not user space.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Edward850