Things about Doom you just found out

2 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Funnily enough I see it from a totally different persepctive. I much prefer to have several source-ports to choose from, all of which being competent at what they do, as opposed to having one single port that is, in theory, able to emulate all the behaviours, but ends up not doing so anyway because people can't be bothered to toggle certain options for certain WADs.

 

In essence, I like it when things are more clear cut when it come to ports, rather than blurry by virtue of having a "standard" that actually is no standard at all, but rather an amalgam of all sorts of behaviours and quirks etc (even though it's probably be fun to mess around with).

 

Forks in the road... I dunno man... What's so bad about having different things that do what they do well? Isn't it more an issue on the player's end if they play a map the wrong source port, or with wrong compat flags to start with? I mean, I surely am in the camp of "play that stuff in the intended source port in the intended way", certainly more than most others are, but I still don't see there being issues with different "platforms" for people to design their stuff around.

 

As for attitude: I get where you are coming from, and I think that some things that have been "fixed" might not have been necessary to fix, but at the same time, the attitude that people shouldn't fix something because "that's how it always was", is a double edged sword as well. Like, if I designed a platforming section for SR40, and some port "fixed" SR40, then said port is incompatible with my map (and many others for that matter), which is why I think that such steps are actually taken somewhat carefully (at least I hope so), because something tells me people want their sourceport to be as widely useable as possible (and if not that's to their disadvantage).

Everything you say makes sense, yet it doesn't really jive with where I'm coming from. Sigh! Not your fault - I blame my current lack of ability to be descriptive enough, among other things. I am trying to convey not only the facts as I see them, but I'm also trying to emphasize with, say, a newcomer to Doom.

I'm going to end my part in this by throwing out a few ideas which may or may not help paint the picture:

1. How would a launcher program know how to load a present a game of Doom to this newcomer, with a reasonable expectation that the game will play more or less as the author intended?
2. How many hours/weeks/months does it take a newcomer to even know which port does what? Which port is best for what? (Yeah, I know, read the .txt file, right?)

Most people on Doomworld understand these questions, but it really does involve a steep learning curve. It's not just the port that has forked. It's the demos, it's the skillset of the players, strategies, documentation, explanations, whole forum threads, map text file goofiness ("I tested it with this and this, YMMV..."). And, it's not a single fork, it spawns deep decision trees that touch upon many aspects.

Don't get me wrong - it's not the end of the world. But, it carries a non-zero cost, every time a gameplay option is created. Notice I said "option". The problem gets a lot worse when it's an unconditional change. Again, sure, after some time, we become experts in these things over time.

The point is, describing how a port differs from a common standard, vanilla, is a lot less intimidating than having to become fluent in the various philosophies of every Doom source port developer, isn't it? Without a common understanding of common terms and behaviors, we must all become experts just to rationally communicate. Again, many of us cannot appreciate this dilemma, cause we've been forced to become experts.

I am not criticizing the choices and options, or even the philosophies. I am criticizing how they are portrayed (bug this, flaw that, a quirk here, an exploit there). I believe that this "selective shitting" towards or away from vanilla that tends to piss people off, creating these ridiculous factions and port wars.

Somehow, I get called a "purist", though I'm all about customization, of resources, of gameplay.

There is vanilla, then there is everything else. Vanilla is the *only* constant. And there are well over a dozen versions of vanilla (sigh). Luckily, we can safely concentrate on just a few, for 99% of our day-to-day Doom needs.

I am so done with this subject... For now?

Newbies are kinda screwed. Source ports like ZDoom don't care at all about presenting the game the way it was created: right from the start the jumping is available, the crouching is available, and so on.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

This is the kind of mess that you can't undo. You can't force vanilla code back into ZDoom - and it's not needed there either. And it wouldn't fix the problem of having "lowest common denominator" defaults.

3 hours ago, kb1 said:

(bug this, flaw that, a quirk here, an exploit there)

Sounds about right to me.

I'm all for preserving those, but I'd rather call them what they are. On the other hand, I'm against going too far, like proclaiming 8-bit rendering a thing best left in the past.

29 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

On the other hand, I'm against going too far, like proclaiming 8-bit rendering a thing best left in the past.

( i'm pretty sure everything but the color in Doom's renderer is 32-bit, and the color itself is 24-bit assigned to an 8-bit palette )

Okay.

3 hours ago, Da Werecat said:

Newbies are kinda screwed. Source ports like ZDoom don't care at all about presenting the game the way it was created: right from the start the jumping is available, the crouching is available, and so on.

 

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

This is the kind of mess that you can't undo. You can't force vanilla code back into ZDoom - and it's not needed there either. And it wouldn't fix the problem of having "lowest common denominator" defaults.

 

Sounds about right to me.

 

I'm all for preserving those, but I'd rather call them what they are. On the other hand, I'm against going too far, like proclaiming 8-bit rendering a thing best left in the past.

this is why i really like and promote prboom+ to people; its simple and doesnt have too many options that will 'ruin' a mapset.

whenever i try and use g/zdoom im overwhelmed by the menus etc. :(

1 hour ago, rehelekretep said:

this is why i really like and promote prboom+ to people; its simple and doesnt have too many options that will 'ruin' a mapset.

whenever i try and use g/zdoom im overwhelmed by the menus etc. :(

I honestly find PrBoom+'s menus to being really clunky while finding GZDoom's dense yet manageable. It might be a way-of-thinking thing - I'd imagine GZDoom's menus are hell if you'd also have trouble navigating an multi-tiered file system, no matter how organized it may be.

I still have no idea what's with the distinction between "general" and "setup" options in PrBoom+, though.

My Main issue with PrBoom is the mouse movement feels very... 'chunky' for want of a better way to explain it. With GZDoom I can move the mouse and the player's aim goes exactly where I expected it to, whereas in PrBoom I oftentimes find myself turning too little or too far. No matter how much I tweak the mouse options I can't quite get that 'feel' right.

22 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

My Main issue with PrBoom is the mouse movement feels very... 'chunky' for want of a better way to explain it

Have you tried PrBoom+ 2.5.1.5 yet? That might make a difference.

2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Have you tried PrBoom+ 2.5.1.5 yet? That might make a difference.

I would not advise using that version though, last time I checked it the mouse smoothing was crazy.

I'll check it out and decide for myself, hope it solves it for me. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

Maybe I don't have the same 2.5.1.5, but it's perfect for me. It's the older versions that behaved horribly due to all the Windows cursor acceleration shenanigans.

2 hours ago, rehelekretep said:

this is why i really like and promote prboom+ to people; its simple and doesnt have too many options that will 'ruin' a mapset.

whenever i try and use g/zdoom im overwhelmed by the menus etc. :(

Agreed, GZDoom's menus can easily be overwhelming even after getting used to them due to how complex and highly customizable they are, and aren't noob-friendly either. But oh well at least there's always a Reset option in case something gets screwed in the process.

PrBoom+ also lacks some basic features that can bother some people (me for instance) though, such as an inability to unbind keys, but it's manageable at the end of the day.

Delete unbinds keys.

Older versions didn't have that, but I don't remember when it changes.

16 hours ago, kb1 said:

I see merit in vanilla, *and* in the "bug-fixed" ports, and everywhere inbetween. For better or worse, *all* of it is part of a larger picture: The entire legacy of the game. For years, players slowly learned techniques that helped them become better players. That knowledge was eventually made common. Do you think the players were "willingly exploiting bugs" when they discovered these "tricks"? The masters became such, by exploiting all of their talents, and tools available to them. You see, when you release a game, you give up some control to your audience. The game becomes ours, somewhat. The techniques we learn are our accomplishments, and they should be rewarded, or, at least, allowed to continue to exist. Not erased from history.

 

Some people believe that those legacy masters should be handicapped because of their cleverness. Some people want to label these techniques as "dirty little secrets", holes that should be plugged up.

 

I hardly knew any of these techniques, yet I will vigorously defend and support the techniques, and the players that learned and used them, because the sum of all of the skills, techniques, tricks, and bugs collectively makes up the gameplay that has been presented to the public for 25 years as "Doom". Whether these tricks are bugs, intended or not, whether you or I started in 1993, whether we like them or not, is irrelevant. It is what it is. The only pretense I see is that some people want to pretend that some of Doom's behaviors never existed.

Thanks for summarizing this so eloquently. This is how I feel about it as well. For me there is something beautiful about how people can work within the limits to achieve something that other people didn't think would be possible. Examples I'd highlight would be:

• Batman Doom's "Killer Croc" monster that picks up rocks and throws them at you
• MAP31 of Requiem, where there's a 3D floor illusion manufactured from bleeding floor textures
• The Pacifist speedrun of E2M8 that came out recently
• Espi's Suspended in Dusk, where the start of MAP02 has you press a button to teleport in some barrels. Also the 3D spaceships constructed out of mid-textures.
• Linguortals

For me it's a delight to see these things; it's not just another level or another speedrun - someone has discovered something truly new and clever, pushed beyond what we thought was possible. 

That's not to say that I don't value all the other stuff as well - I'm so glad that we have ZDoom and all its descendants because Doom is such a great, fruitful platform for creativity, and it deserves to be as powerful a platform as possible for people who want to make mods for it. I can happily enjoy mods for such ports - I loved Urban Brawl so much I bought the boxed DVD for example. And I truly hate when "purists" (who are usually fans of my work) start judging other people and criticizing them for how they play the game. I'm not so presumptuous to think that the id developers "intended" the game to only ever be run at 320x200, or that Doom's many bugs are all intentional, deliberate things. 

But I value history. Bugs deserve to get fixed but sometimes those fixes "break" tricks which others have used to their advantage. I want people to be able to continue to see these tricks for themselves and enjoy them too, and I also want to enable others to keep developing new tricks so I can continue to be surprised and impressed.

3 hours ago, rehelekretep said:

this is why i really like and promote prboom+ to people; its simple and doesnt have too many options that will 'ruin' a mapset.

whenever i try and use g/zdoom im overwhelmed by the menus etc. :(

However, the thing is that new players probably want to play BD or PB or something like that...

2 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

However, the thing is that new players probably want to play BD or PB or something like that...

Don't give 'em any ideas, they're not entirely lost yet ;-)

8 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

Delete unbinds keys.

 

Older versions didn't have that, but I don't remember when it changes.

2.5.1.5 adds the feature I presume. I'm using 2.5.1.4 and just tried using Delete to unbind the keys, didn't work.

For now a shame since 1.5. is a no-go for me, insane mouse smoothing and I prefer not to mess with the mouse settings in windows just for this.

7 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Don't give 'em any ideas, they're not entirely lost yet ;-)

Well, actually the time I came back to play Doom is somewhat the reason of BD, but quickly I realized it becomes b0ring quickly... I switched to PrBoom+ last year because I don't like filter, but I can't find the way to turn it off until @rehelekretepposted his config file and the filter is off. Too much information for my little brain I guess :D

BTW, nice new avatar.

12 hours ago, Da Werecat said:

Newbies are kinda screwed. Source ports like ZDoom don't care at all about presenting the game the way it was created: right from the start the jumping is available, the crouching is available, and so on.

They are already screwed, because they don't even bother to read text files that comes with the wads.

On 1/13/2018 at 0:15 PM, fraggle said:

Thanks for summarizing this so eloquently. This is how I feel about it as well. For me there is something beautiful about how people can work within the limits to achieve something that other people didn't think would be possible.

Thank you for getting it! I am hoping that, one day, we'll be able to have our cake and eat it too. We'll see.

On 1/13/2018 at 0:21 PM, GarrettChan said:

However, the thing is that new players probably want to play BD or PB or something like that...

Brutal Doom is a massive achievement, and it highlights how far Doom editing has come.

On 1/13/2018 at 6:33 PM, riderr3 said:

They are already screwed, because they don't even bother to read text files that comes with the wads.

I don't believe that we should *have* to read the .txt files, just to be able to properly play the game. That's a big part of what I've been trying to say: If a text file can tell a human how to configure and play the game, a configuration file/lump should be able to tell your computer how to set up and play the game automatically. The fact that the same wad file acts differently in different ports is inexcusable, in my opinion. While I understand how things got that way, and realize that there was no malicious intent involved, it is a sad state of affairs. It may not always be the case, but with the current state of editing, there's no reason that we cannot achieve this goal, with some hard work and persistence.

Thankfully my OCD makes it so I have to read the text doc(s) that come with something, because I always think I'm gonna miss some cute background story or run into compatibility issues with a gameplay mod.

On 13.1.2018 at 7:25 PM, Agent6 said:

2.5.1.5 adds the feature I presume. I'm using 2.5.1.4 and just tried using Delete to unbind the keys, didn't work.

 

For now a shame since 1.5. is a no-go for me, insane mouse smoothing and I prefer not to mess with the mouse settings in windows just for this.

Open prboom-plus.cfg from the PrBoom folder in a text editor and find the "Key bindings" section. 

Give the unneeded commands a value: 0x0

The next time the PrBoom's bindings page will display their bindings as "JUNK".
 

PrBoom+: says when opening Key binding section after giving unneeded commands value 0x0:

Anyways, I recently found out that Circle of Death secret in the lift section just before the Archvile area.

On 13/01/2018 at 0:21 PM, Arctangent said:

( i'm pretty sure everything but the color in Doom's renderer is 32-bit, and the color itself is 24-bit assigned to an 8-bit palette )

If I'm not mistaken Doom has up to about 250 different colors on the screen at any time, most/all the different palettes contain duplicate entries. The colors are chosen from a 18 bit color space, 6bits per color. So 262144 different colors to choose from. If one adds all the colors from all the palettes it uses and remove duplicates I reckon Doom has somewhere between 1200 and 1500 different colors. Regular + green tint + pickup tints + blood tints. It would be interesting to see if anyone could parse the wad file color palette entries and give us the exact result.

6 minutes ago, zokum said:

If I'm not mistaken Doom has up to about 250 different colors on the screen at any time, most/all the different palettes contain duplicate entries. The colors are chosen from a 18 bit color space, 6bits per color. So 262144 different colors to choose from. If one adds all the colors from all the palettes it uses and remove duplicates I reckon Doom has somewhere between 1200 and 1500 different colors. Regular + green tint + pickup tints + blood tints. It would be interesting to see if anyone could parse the wad file color palette entries and give us the exact result.

Well, I doubt the duplicate entries are because the renderer can't support a full 8-bit palette, especially since 250 is a really weird number for something like that. Didn't know the palette only had 18-bit color space, though - is that due to the format of the PLAYPAL lump, or can PLAYPAL support 24-bit color that's then converted to 18-bit by the engine for the sake of the renderer?

1 minute ago, Arctangent said:

Well, I doubt the duplicate entries are because the renderer can't support a full 8-bit palette, especially since 250 is a really weird number for something like that. Didn't know the palette only had 18-bit color space, though - is that due to the format of the PLAYPAL lump, or can PLAYPAL support 24-bit color that's then converted to 18-bit by the engine for the sake of the renderer?

The duplicate entries are because id screwed up, I don't remember the exact number. The palette is less than optimal. It's a lot better than Wolfenstein 3d, which uses the default colors from Deluxe Paint, this explains the slightly odd color scheme in that game. The 18 bit stuff is part of how some VGA mode(s) work. Doom tells the graphics card which colors each index is mapped to. So when you get hit in Doom by a bullet, pick up an item, wear a rad suit etc, all it does is upload a new palette and draw with this palette instead of the default one until it swaps to another palette again. This technique is called palette swapping and is very common in many games of the era.

Doom doesn't really tell the gfx card to render something in red or dark red, it tells it to render that pixel with the color in palette position X. Change the palettes and you change the color of the entire game.

Storing each color as 18 bits would probably be easier on the hardware they had at the time and would use less memory. Since you can only use 256 different colors at once anyway, there wouldn't be much added fidelity in going from 6 to 8 bits per channel. If I'm not mistaken older versions of doom use mode 13h while later uses a 'mode x'. Read up on Abrash Black Book for more information about this, it's freely available as pdf.

For a good demonstration what can be done with color cylcing and palette swaps, take a look at: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/?sound=0

Try looking at the same image with different palette versions. the image is the same, only the colors change.

It should be possible to make a doom wad with a custom palette where you would only see certain details when you're wearing a rad suit or taking damage. A very simple demonstration of this would be to map a few colors to all black in the default palette, but when you're wearing the raid suit the colors map to different shades, allowing you to see hidden writing. Step it up a notch and you could hide demonic messages and pentagrams that only show up when you take damage...

38 minutes ago, zokum said:

It would be interesting to see if anyone could parse the wad file color palette entries and give us the exact result.

rjy@vile /tmp % deutex -get playpal
i WR19 Reading WAD /usr/share/games/doom/doom2.wad:     (2919 entries)
i WR19 Reading WAD /usr/share/games/doom/doom2.wad:     (2919 entries)
i PL05 Palette is Doom
i GE02 /usr/share/games/doom/doom2.wad: PLAYPAL: extracting
w PI10 Picture PLAYPAL: width < 1 (0), skipping picture
i AA99 Normal exit

rjy@vile /tmp % convert -size 256x1 -depth 8 rgb:playpal.lmp -append -format '%k\n' info:
3386

3 minutes ago, RjY said:

rjy@vile /tmp % deutex -get playpal
i WR19 Reading WAD /usr/share/games/doom/doom2.wad:     (2919 entries)
i WR19 Reading WAD /usr/share/games/doom/doom2.wad:     (2919 entries)
i PL05 Palette is Doom
i GE02 /usr/share/games/doom/doom2.wad: PLAYPAL: extracting
w PI10 Picture PLAYPAL: width < 1 (0), skipping picture
i AA99 Normal exit

rjy@vile /tmp % convert -size 256x1 -depth 8 rgb:playpal.lmp -append -format '%k\n' info:
3386

 

I don't think you have removed all the duplicates.

1 minute ago, zokum said:

I don't think you have removed all the duplicates.

-format %k gives a calculated count of unique colours. With and without -unique-colors gave the same result, 3386. If there were no duplicates, the result would be 3584 (i.e. 256*14).

rjy@vile /tmp % convert -size 256x1 -depth 8 rgb:playpal.lmp -append -format '%k\n' info:
3386

rjy@vile /tmp % convert -size 256x1 -depth 8 rgb:playpal.lmp -append -unique-colors -format '%k\n' info:
3386

rjy@vile /tmp % convert -size 256x1 -depth 8 rgb:playpal.lmp -append info:
rgb:playpal.lmp RGB 256x14 256x1+0+0 8-bit sRGB 0.000u 0:00.000

rjy@vile /tmp % convert -size 256x1 -depth 8 rgb:playpal.lmp -append -unique-colors info:
rgb:playpal.lmp RGB 3386x1 3386x0+0+0 8-bit sRGB 0.000u 0:00.000