SMOOTH DOOM [UPDATE 4/14/20]

8 hours ago, Xfing said:

Maybe someday I could try. I'm kind of an anti-talent when it comes to coding, afraid as hell to try too :x

Yeah, it's not for everyone. But, if you make copies of everything before you start, there's nothing to fear. Get in there and make a change, and see what effect it has. Also, Google is your friend. Knowledge builds on knowledge. Before long, it might start to become fun. Usually, what you learn in one area can be used in other areas.

One thing I can say for sure: I can't remember the last time I was bored.

BTW, to change the subject a little bit - is it just me, or are the skyboxes in Doom 2 actually the ones from Doom when playing with Smooth Doom?

On 7/13/2018 at 11:50 AM, Xfing said:

BTW, to change the subject a little bit - is it just me, or are the skyboxes in Doom 2 actually the ones from Doom when playing with Smooth Doom?

Nvm that! That was just the HD texture pack I had in my folder. For some reason it gives Doom 1's skyboxes for D2 too. 

Hey all, the Zombieman improved walk cycle is being prototyped for all frontal-facing frames (IE, angles 1, 2 and 3). You can try them out in the test wad below. This is going to be part of a long-term effort to clean up a lot of the animations in the mod and improve what I've already done. The imp is going to be the next monster to get some improvements. Black gloves will also hopefully be returning to the mod soon.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7UjVRGUGknvUGVScFpZQlFEY3M/view?usp=sharing

Aw man gifty. Your SmoothDoom mod is my "go to" standard addition to every Doom wad I play. It's already amazing as it is, but bringing back black gloves would be amazing of course. Really great work, I love this mod.

What exactly is the improved Zombieman walk cycle? Never noticed something off. Looks okay to me. :D

Thanks, dude!

If you go to the previous page, at the very top is a WIP gif of what I'm talking about. I've gone back and totally redesigned the walk cycle, whereas before I was really just cycling the vanilla frames in a smoother-looking way :P It looks much improved, you should try the test wad!

Oh, that looks neat! I want to try this asap. Unfortunately I have a hard time downloading something from Google Drive (living in China). I‘ll ask some mates to send it to me.

Hey Gifty, dunno if people keep you in the loop for bugs and issues, but there's a few I wanted to point out.

-Cacos and HellKnights still bleed some red when they're killed

-SSG doesn't drop shell casings for some reason

-When Doom64 style items is on, the cell charge pack uses the D64 plasma rifle sprite

-Arachnotrons don't have the particle effects when they're set to both player and enemy

This was on the current version of GZDoom. Just wanted to see if you were aware of these.

Great mod btw, looking forward to future updates.

Well, here goes nothing! I finally got off my busy ass and pulled together an update for Smooth Doom, since a lot of things seem to get broken whenever I take a break. Importantly, this update reenables the black gloves (they can now be found under "weapon set" at the very bottom of the options page) and fixes some further things with the Doom64 weapons. I've also generally improved some of the regular weapon animations, recycling some sprite work I did for the Dead Marine mod.

-REIMPLEMENTED BLACK GLOVES!
-gore causes fewer water splashes
-slight tweaks to gore physics
-fixed imps not following giblet toggle
-fixed "nodelay" error messages
-fixed player plasma not having sparkles when set to "player and monsters"
-fixed plasma rifle firing in bursts of 3
-fixed Doom64 chaingun displaying PC sprites
-pushed DabbingSquidward's variant spawner fix
-key pickups should now give you the standard/nonsmooth key as well, for better compatibility with other wads/mods

-improved most weapon recoil animations
-improved plasma rifle fire animation
-improved Shotgun fire animation
-improved SSG fire animation
-improved chaingun fire animation
-improved chainsaw animation and made audio less fiddly

-removed "jawless" zombie sprites

What the updates from here on out are going to look like is probably mostly upgrades to the existing monster animations, as looking at them for years has made me hate some of them. Zombiemen should be getting a boost in the next update, which hopefully will finish up quicker than this update did.

I have to thank you greatly for this update, since I have never even seen the black gloves in action! Finally I can see them in action. Smooth Doom is one of my most favourite mods ever (next to the 2x Neural Upscale) and I try to play as many WADs with it, as possible.

When I am at it; Sometimes, when I gib a lot of enemies (or only Mancubi, not sure) my frames drop to around... 5. The interesting or funny thing about this is, that it never stops and even quitting and reloading a save doesn't bring the framrate up again. Any guess what this could be?

3 hours ago, elend said:

When I am at it; Sometimes, when I gib a lot of enemies (or only Mancubi, not sure) my frames drop to around... 5. The interesting or funny thing about this is, that it never stops and even quitting and reloading a save doesn't bring the framrate up again. Any guess what this could be?

That's weird, I have that EXACT same issue with Droplets 1.2.1 and 1.3, the 2 most recent versions of it. Wish I knew what causes that.

4 hours ago, elend said:

When I am at it; Sometimes, when I gib a lot of enemies (or only Mancubi, not sure) my frames drop to around... 5. The interesting or funny thing about this is, that it never stops and even quitting and reloading a save doesn't bring the framrate up again. Any guess what this could be?

That's really peculiar, it definitely shouldn't be doing that. I do want to optimize and update the gore effects at some point, but it sounds like you might be having a whole other issue!

In other news, I just noticed the "plasma rifle pickup Sprite floating in space" oddity, so I'll be getting to the bottom of that soon.

1 minute ago, Gifty said:

In other news, I just noticed the "plasma rifle pickup Sprite floating in space" oddity, so I'll be getting to the bottom of that soon.

I was just about to ask about that.

I thought it was something on my end.

Really love this updated version, and appreciate the black gloves being added. Unfortunately I ran into the same issue as elend. Was playing Haruko Haruhara's map Shindark with Smooth Doom, nothing else in the load order except Steve's Flashlight Mod, it's a dark map, and there was a big room with about 20 Imps and after gibbing most of em with the SSG, the frame rate took a huge dive temporarily. After I left the room it lagged again for a second but returned to normal and was able to complete the map without any more issues. I normally run this mod with all the decorative effects on with the exception of Doom 64 items and weapons. I don't have the best pc so I'm sure that plays a part in the issue. 

2 hours ago, Beezle said:

Really love this updated version, and appreciate the black gloves being added. Unfortunately I ran into the same issue as elend. Was playing Haruko Haruhara's map Shindark with Smooth Doom, nothing else in the load order except Steve's Flashlight Mod, it's a dark map, and there was a big room with about 20 Imps and after gibbing most of em with the SSG, the frame rate took a huge dive temporarily. After I left the room it lagged again for a second but returned to normal and was able to complete the map without any more issues. I normally run this mod with all the decorative effects on with the exception of Doom 64 items and weapons. I don't have the best pc so I'm sure that plays a part in the issue. 

Yeah, as I mentioned above I think the gore effects are going to need some optimization soon. I think I'm going to move closer to the Dead Marine gore system, which looks pretty nice (I think!) but is much less performance-heavy. One thing you can do in the short term that helps a lot is disable blood splats, those make up a lot of the physics calculations in the current gore system, so disabling them should give you a boost.

EDIT: I've put out a hotfix for some of the snags I missed in last night's update. I'm STILL baffled by the plasma rifle pickup sprite thing, still looking into that, but I figured I would push a few other fixes in the interim.

-removed "ground blood splats" pending a more CPU-friendly gore system (this should stop hangups people were having on levels like The Crusher, etc)
-fixed 64-style cell pack displaying wrong sprite
-fixed 64 BFG returning to PC sprites when holding fire
-fixed PC BFG offset snapping
-added Nintendo 64-style Rifle sprites when using the Rifle mutator

So, I still have no black gloves. And no black gloves option. But, the gibbing framerate issue seems to have been improved and maybe even resolved. Have to further test it to be sure, but it runs way better.

Amazing work, thank you so much. Smooth Doom is just the best. Best gore, best animations, best death variety, etc. Brutal Doom is just nonsense imho.

Thank you! It's truly fulfilling to me that so many people have enjoyed this mod. C:

The black gloves have been reshuffled under "weapon set" at the bottom of the options list, where the Doom64 skins are. Let me know if you're able to find it!

Oh there they are. Yes, works now!

I am experiencing the floating plasma gun bug too. It is trippy and dangerous, could cause someone to get killed in-game.

I can not find download for monsters only version of smooth doom. Is it discontinued? I guess I can easily make it myself with Slade, or is there anything special I should know?

Archviles use their death frame when ressurecting other monsters O.o What is this? Some bad voodoo? Please help.

Hi everybody! That pesky plasma rifle sprite thing is fixed. What a weird bug.

-improved gore effects (and hopefully performance!
-improved plasma sparkle effects!
-improved bullet spark effects!
-GREATLY improved zombieman/sarge animations! (sarge is still WIP)
-improved imp projectile; death is redone; "phases in" when spawned
-trimmed down the number of monster variant skins
-"Faster pinky" mutator can now toggle without restarting the level
-gore now disappears in water
-fixed dynamic lights for burning barrel
-fixed various "glovetoggle" error messages
-fixed the plasma rifle floating sprite issue (thanks, Dabbing Squidward!)
-fixed zombies erroneously spawning casings

As I mentioned, most of my efforts from this point will be focused on improving the animations already included. Hidfan's neural upscale is really heating up and there are tons of things I would like to spiff up majorly before they go through the magical upscaling machine. The zombieman gets a HUGE improvement in this update which I'm extremely excited for you guys to see, and the shotgunner is about halfway though the same process. A side effect of this, however, is that I'm pruning out a lot of the monster variants that have previously been part of this mod. Partly because, a few years on, they feel kind of silly, but also because I've encountered the unfortunate reality that they slow down monster-related improvements by A LOT. Every time I want to go back and fix/improve something in the monster sprites, there are hundreds of variant sprites to contend with. I think having fewer, better-looking sprites is better than the alternative of having tons of variety with no polish. As it stands I'm kind of leaning towards just leaving the helmeted zombies and checking back in on variants at a later date. I hate to keep disabling or pruning old features like this, I know the Doom64 skins and gloves only just came back, but frankly it's all getting very difficult to maintain and sometimes to improve you've got to start from a simpler place!

Anyway, exciting times! The gore system should also now look and run much better. Hope you enjoy the update!

Thanks a lot for your efforts and keeping this thing not only alive but also letting it mature like a fine wine! :D And of course, sometimes "less is more", so just remove whatever you think doesn't work anymore.

Yes, this is one of the best mods I have ever played, I would not want to play doom without it again. Some of the parts of the mod should be even included in the base game, like sprite fixes, but I doubt Id will ever update the game. They did increase resolution in that port, which was included in BFG edition of doom 3, but I guess sprite fixing was too much work for them.

So thanks for working on this masterpiece and Merry Xmass.

On 12/18/2018 at 8:13 PM, Gifty said:

Hi everybody! That pesky plasma rifle sprite thing is fixed. What a weird bug.

Sadly, even after downloading the latest version of SmoothDoom (and no other mods), I'm still experiencing the plasma rifle sprite bug. I'm using gzdoom 3.6.0.

I must say I've been using SmoothDoom quite a lot lately, it is a excellent! Congratulations on its success.

Correction:

Apologies, I spoke too soon, I've done some more investigation. As long as SmoothDoom is loaded last in the wadlist, the plasma rifle works properly now. This means loading it after the the iwad, any other mods and the pwads.

The way I normally "install" a mod in gzdoom is to add it to the Global.Autoload section of the gzdoom ini. Installed this way gzdoom will load SmoothDoom after the iwad but before the pwads. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a gzdoom option for postloading. Anyway, some SmoothDoom features may not work when added to Global.Autoload if the following pwads tamper with the weapons.

When SmoothDoom is added as to Global.Autoload I get the following results for the plasma rifle bug in handful of wads I've tested:

Works in: ultimate doom, doom2, tnt, plutonia, av, sodfinal, sf2011, mayhem18o, eviternity.

Fails in:  sunlust, 50monstr, strg, mayhem18p

The 4 failures above are fixed if instead I load SmoothDoom as a pwad at the end of list of wads (with the -file option).

Aplogies if I've waffled on about what most mod users already know, but it took me a little while to work it out so I thought these insights might help some others trying to get SmoothDoom to work for them.

Helmeted zombies? :o 

Oh yeah, I must have not enabled this option. But yeah, it's probably a good call to focus on the vanilla sprites and make them as good as they could be. I'm really hoping the day comes sometime down the line where there are at least 3 death anims for each monster! But yeah, I know how tough that is going to be, considering you don't like most of the ones already existing :P 

Glad you intend to do the neural upscaling too, though - that's guaranteed to make Smooth Doom the consummate way to play classic Doom.

Just to cast my vote into the ballot; I do like the alternative skins, decorations and deaths. If possible, they could stay. If too much work and SmoothDoom could be improved in other aspects with the removal of those alternative skins and deaths, then so be it. ;p

Been playing more with it recently and really, really love it. It's not only the best vanilla improvement in general, but also the best gore mod. Love those chunky giblets.

hello, i'd like to report a bug. 

the default shotgunguy (SPOS) on frame F of it's SEE animation emits a dynamic light. (his helmet variations work fine)

basically, it flickers while he's walking.

(also, i actually just discovered that the mod has options. really love that. i really like the variations of the zombieman and the shotgunguy. you said it's a lot of effort to improve all of them which i understand completely. but perhaps it's possible to cut the sprites in half basically. have a body for both the zombieman and shotgunguy and heads that can easily be replaced. i don't know if this is feasible but that's how i would try to do to make the workflow easier.)

I saw that flickering, too and thought my brightlights or something are broken. At first I thought it was one of the mod's features, which I played. It looks kinda funny actually.

i found two small bugs in SmoothDoom.

first, `DoomImp` is replaced twice: first time with `SmoothDoomImp`, and second time with `ImpDice`. while not fatal, first replacement is unnecessary.

and second, more subtle bug: `ImpDice` never spawns `ImpV2`, due to this line:

TNT1 A 0 A_Jump(256, "Standard")

it should be this instead:

TNT1 A 0 A_Jump(256, "Standard", "Variant2")

it is hard to notice in-game, as two imps are very similar. that is prolly why nobody noticed yet.

Hello, just bumping this thread to share a link from ZDoom Forums, acridAxid made a couple of fixes including the Doom 64's weapon set not showing the proper animations: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=45550&start=1575#p1096562

I was thinking about merging the neural upscale animation with smooth doom or neural upscaling the Whole smooth doom pack.

what do you think? it will take lots of time in my opinion...