Screem - the Palette

Screem_Pals.zip

With the current ongoing topic of people recreating the atmosphere they experienced when first playing Doom, here is my contribution.

This palette is my attempt at modelling the monitor I had as a young'un on my initial playthrough of the shareware Episode 1 and Doom II. The key feature that it had was darker dark-reds which countered the abnormal brightness within Doom's palette.

Included in the zip file is a second wad intended for Sigil (and software rendering). It contains a custom colourmap which keeps the light diminishing as bright as the original.

Comparison from top to bottom: Doom colourmap, Screem colourmap, Screem colourmap (Sigil).

This is fucking brilliant.

Using this with the Vanilla essence mod for GZDoom, gives a surreal and vivid sense of oldschool Doom.

I don't know how 'authentic' this is in an absolutely objective sense, but subjectively, it gives a very profound experience of vanilla Dooming.

Just out of curiosity, why a different colormap for Sigil?

Vanilla Essence mod you say? I don't know of such a thing and will investigate immediately. Want to check this palette out then.

57 minutes ago, elend said:

Vanilla Essence mod you say? I don't know of such a thing and will investigate immediately. Want to check this palette out then.

Please do. Latest version here:

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=59412

Between this palette and Vanilla essence, sheer vanilla awesomeness. Enjoy. Chocolate Doom is amazing, but a little inconvenient, especially for a non techie like I am. But Vanilla essence. Configure a Key in options, and with one keystrone, Vanilla purity. Then with the same keystroke, back to modern Dooming without a hitch.

Soz Marinara, don't mean to derail your thread. I hope your palette gets a lot of love. It really is working magic for me.

Thanks bLOCKbOY. Not a derail at all- it definitely relates to this and I happen to be one of the folk who work on it as well. For anyone who's curious here's a cool review.

14 hours ago, bLOCKbOYgAMES said:

I don't know how 'authentic' this is in an absolutely objective sense, but subjectively, it gives a very profound experience of vanilla Dooming.

There's definitely elements of subjectivity at play. I don't have a CRT on hand to compare to nowadays but I do have the lasting impression of Dooming on one and the observations/disappointment of returning with an LCD. And once I've completed the rest of the shader behind this palette anyone will be able to adjust the levels themselves (for any palette out there):

14 hours ago, bLOCKbOYgAMES said:

Just out of curiosity, why a different colormap for Sigil?

My (subjective) theory is that Romero was using an LCD monitor when designing the maps and set the sector lighting darker than if he had used a CRT. In itself it's not a problem, but when combined with this palette/shader it becomes hard to see. The Sigil colourmap somewhat compensates for that but I think the 'Balance Lighting' option above goes further.

Finally, a suggestion to maximise authenticity is to set your backlight to it's brightest and then bring it back a smidge so that black isn't greyed out. Then use Doom's gamma control to adjust further.

Those colormap sliders look really good. So anyone can refine Doom to their own subjective memory of classic Dooming until it feels right to them. Nice. I like that.

I have tried a number of classic Doom wads with the Screem colormap and they all feel perfect to me. Ultimate Doom, Doom2, NEIS.wad Plutonia 2, PRCP.wad, and TNT Revilution to name a couple.

Sigil Screem feels too dark to me, though I have not played through the whole mapset with Screem. For example, on E5M1, the wide walkway that leads to the exit where the first cacodemon pops up, I cant see the edges of that walkway, which seems too dark. But regular Screem with all those other classic wads... Fantastic.

Interesting idea to set backlight to brightest.

5 hours ago, bLOCKbOYgAMES said:

Those colormap sliders look really good. So anyone can refine Doom to their own subjective memory of classic Dooming until it feels right to them. Nice. I like that.

The idea was to be able to control virtual RGB electron guns without discolouration of the CMYK components. Instead those are controlled by blending their neighbour's slider values. The amounts shown are what were used for this palette and will be one of the presets.

5 hours ago, bLOCKbOYgAMES said:

Sigil Screem feels too dark to me, though I have not played through the whole mapset with Screem. For example, on E5M1, the wide walkway that leads to the exit where the first cacodemon pops up, I cant see the edges of that walkway, which seems too dark. But regular Screem with all those other classic wads... Fantastic.

It could be from using a hardware renderer? They ignore the colourmap in favour of truecolour. In GZDoom the palette shader recreates a colourmap (in a Look Up Table) that is close to this Sigil-aimed one. The 'Balance Lighting' option will be useful for Sigil + HW rendering.

5 hours ago, bLOCKbOYgAMES said:

Interesting idea to set backlight to brightest.

Well close to anyway. In my research I found out that CRTs have whites which are considered nearly as bright as LCDs. But they also have a darker gamma which I think makes them less fatiguing and more likely for us to max them out.

This is mint, the comparison gif at the top really sells it. Here's a couple of screens running screem + doom delta + dtwid + vanilla essence

Now that's retro!

18 hours ago, Space Marinara said:

It could be from using a hardware renderer? They ignore the colourmap in favour of truecolour. In GZDoom the palette shader recreates a colourmap (in a Look Up Table) that is close to this Sigil-aimed one. The 'Balance Lighting' option will be useful for Sigil + HW rendering.

Oh I see. Yes I was totally using a hardware renderer on GZDoom. Imps shouldn't have blurry edges on them, dammit!

Ok I'm gonna go turn on my software renderer and see how that works. Thanks for the replies. Appreciated.

Hrmm, It seems I was wrong about the palette shader lightening the scene. Or at least I can't see an appreciable difference when standing on that bridge.

Might be better to set the sector light mode to Software instead of Vanilla if you want to stick to the HW renderer when using this palette with Sigil.