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SeanTheBermanator

I want PrBoom+ 16-bit wav support.

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I hate 8-bit quantization, I want to have 16-bit sound effects in PRBoom. I know that GZDoom has 16-bit compatibility, but I want an engine that is faithful to the original to have 16-bit support. Anyone know how I can possibly add library dependencies or something? I can't ask the creator, since he hasn't done anything to it for 3 years now, so I doubt he is even working on it anymore. I want 16-bit support because I made an HD sound pack which is technically a complete version of Per Kristan's Hi-Res sound pack. Yeah, all 107 (actually 106 because DSITMBK is fine as it is) sounds are accounted for. Lots of sounds that Per Kristan did were also given some touchups, and in some cases, replaced with samples that are 90-100% true to the original. This includes the door sounds (they sounded a bit off), the pistol, both shotguns, and even the plasma gun, as well as Doomguy's death scream. If anyone wants it, tell me and I will make a thread for it. It's called "Doom Sound Bulb." Yes, I got permission from Per Kristan, he is a kind fellow from what I can tell.

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On 12/4/2019 at 6:00 PM, SeanTheBermanator said:

I want an engine that is faithful to the original to have 16-bit support.

 

On 12/4/2019 at 6:00 PM, SeanTheBermanator said:

I want an engine that is faithful to the original

 

On 12/4/2019 at 6:00 PM, SeanTheBermanator said:

faithful to the original

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@Dark Pulse I assume he means the gameplay mechanics by "faithful to the original". Currently, the sound in PRBoom+ is rather shite. Even when maxed at 32 channels, there is still random cutoff even when playing the IWAD maps without much happening. Anything involving multiple Arachnotrons or Revenants turns into pure ear rape, so I'm forced to lower the channels to 12 or 8 to make slaughtermaps bearable. Naturally, that results in a lot of missing sound effects. The port could really use some quality of life changes without sacrificing compatibility.

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32 channels, huh? Here's the real deal: You cannot indiscriminately increase the number of channels without also adding some sort of sound management and balancing. The only way ZDoom got ever away with bumping up the number to 256 was to add the limiting feature that restricts playback of too many identical sounds close to each other.

 

That said, PrBoom's sound is probably the crudest system of all mainstream ports, it got zero facilities to do anything decent.

 

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@SeanTheBermanator Eternity is what you're looking for. It's based on SMMU/MBF/Boom and is vanilla demo compatible, and also has the ability to play back most sound formats (including 16bit WAVs) and has an option to change the maximum sound channels, in fact it defaults to 32.

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5 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

32 channels, huh? Here's the real deal: You cannot indiscriminately increase the number of channels without also adding some sort of sound management and balancing. The only way ZDoom got ever away with bumping up the number to 256 was to add the limiting feature that restricts playback of too many identical sounds close to each other.

 

That said, PrBoom's sound is probably the crudest system of all mainstream ports, it got zero facilities to do anything decent.

 

I was also thinking about something else: How big a difference would make switching to OpenAL in terms of, well, audio fidelity (I won't ask about FMODEX as I remember you saying that it was a pain to keep it up to date in ZDoom, hence why it was eventually replaced with OpenAL)?

 

I've got to agree that PrBoom's sound is pretty shit as well (probably the one thing I can say I hate about it), especially if playing slaughter maps with 32 channels, standing near a Revenant closet while it opens will just blow up the speakers, and lowering the channels results in awful sound cutting.

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29 minutes ago, seed said:

How big a difference would make switching to OpenAL in terms of, well, audio fidelity

it doesn't matter much. what matters is *internal* in-engine channel management. no sound library will help if you'll throw 200 samples at it at the same time. of course, OpenAL can do something with its internal 3D positioning, but not much. you still have to write the subsystem that will decide which sounds can/should be dropped, because the engine knows it better (like 20 arachnotrons around you -- no sound library can know that it should drop most of their attack sounds, that's something the engine should do).

 

p.s.: this is something i definitely should improve in my sourceport too. but... i'm not playing slaughtermaps, so it can wait. ;-)

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Like Ketmar said, just using OpenAL without making other changes won't help much. To use a 3D positional API a lot of changes under the hood are needed, in fact the sound system will have to work quite differently from one that drives a simple two-channel stereo mixer. Of course, once you get there and have it working, it's a massive jump in audio quality, especially when you can hook it up to a quality 5.1 system.

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@Dark PulseI am told that GZDoom is nothing like the original game, unless that is just being said by scummy purists. Is GZDoom at least close to vanilla? I just don't feel like saying "I completed Doom" when I played a version that works different from the original release. I can't play without my HD sounds, I got too used to them. Don't make it like I am being stupid, I am just going by what I am told.

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easy to check: perform a double blind test. and don't forget compatibility options, there are many of them. i bet most people won't guess right (i.e. if it is "unpure" GZDoom, or some other "pure" port; of course, if we'll rule out low resoultions and other such graphical differences).

 

p.s.: eh, i bet people won't guess even k8vavoom with enough compatibility tweaks, and k8vavoom is *way* further from "pure vanilla" than GZDoom (it is not even a lockstep engine!).

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1 hour ago, SeanTheBermanator said:

@Dark PulseI am told that GZDoom is nothing like the original game, unless that is just being said by scummy purists. Is GZDoom at least close to vanilla? I just don't feel like saying "I completed Doom" when I played a version that works different from the original release. I can't play without my HD sounds, I got too used to them. Don't make it like I am being stupid, I am just going by what I am told.

 

GZDoom is not "pure" insofar as some things are different compared to vanilla and it has all the bugs fixed.

 

Being less accurate (physics primarily) means it's not demo compatible as well - GZDoom demos desync in vanilla, and are not compatible even between different versions of GZDoom (say, you record a demo with version 4.2.4, then it's going to be compatible only with that version). Still, despite not being a port for purists, it's still quite close to the original game if you don't mind a change here and there which you probably won't even notice unless you're intimately familiar with a more conservative port.

 

Also pro-tip for you - ignore the "ultra purists" folks who throw around remarks such as "GZDoom is not Doom, it's a heresy/travesty". For some of those even using resolutions higher than 640x400 means treason. Run whatever ports suits your needs and preferences :) . At any rate, if accuracy really is a show-stopper for you, you can try Eternity, Chocolate Doom, PrBoom, RUDE, and Crispy Doom.

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34 minutes ago, seed said:

At any rate, if accuracy really is a show-stopper for you, you can try Eternity, Chocolate Doom, PrBoom, RUDE, and Crispy Doom.

yeah. i'd say that if you want "purist expirience", but still be able to play more than vanilla maps, go with PrBoom or Eternity Engine. they're both demo-compatible, and both supports Boom extensions, so you will prolly be able to play most wads with them.

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1 hour ago, SeanTheBermanator said:

@Dark PulseI am told that GZDoom is nothing like the original game, unless that is just being said by scummy purists. Is GZDoom at least close to vanilla? I just don't feel like saying "I completed Doom" when I played a version that works different from the original release. I can't play without my HD sounds, I got too used to them. Don't make it like I am being stupid, I am just going by what I am told.

Depends on your definition of "like the original game."

 

It undoubtedly changes some things, but a lot of those changes can be optionally turned off if you want, say, infinitely tall actors, or to be able to wallrun like the original game did for example. There's a strict compatibility setting that aims to restore as much of the original behavior as possible, but a few things are fundamentally different. (For example, GZDoom does not use the original RNG tables.)

 

But yes, there are some very scummy purists out there. If you want pure, go play Chocolate, emulate the original on DOSBox, or go and get a retro PC and run it the old-fashioned way. ZDoom and GZDoom have generally been more about finding new things to do with a classic game, not really trying to keep things 1:1 with the past.

 

I would say give it a spin (both with its strictest Doom settings enabled, and another run with the default settings) and see if it still sufficiently feels like Doom to you, because odds are most people who aren't heavily into Doom's technical minutiae would even be able to tell the difference.

 

I'm willing to bet that unless you are picky, it'll be more than fine enough. And it's undoubtedly the king when it comes to modding - only stuff like Eternity Engine ever really came close.

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Sounds are big part of the game, so by using HD soundpack you won't be close to original... IF you really want to experience a real Doom, use Chocolate Doom or Eternity Engine. But if you can't play without HD soundpack, you should not worry about other original parts of Doom too.

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On 12/6/2019 at 3:29 PM, Loud Silence said:

Sounds are big part of the game, so by using HD soundpack you won't be close to original

I really don't think you understand. They ARE the original sounds, but reinvigorated to meet the standards of this decade. I cannot play without the original sounds, so updating them was my best bet. If you want a sample, I can upload the wad up here. Playing Doom with other sounds isn't playing Doom at all.

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Most ports allow you to turn all or most of the rendering tweaks off.

It may even be worth trying Doomsday set to vanilla render, as it has a pretty good sound system also.

But afaik the closest you're going to get to the original is Chocolate-Doom or running Doom through DOSBox.

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I could care less about visuals; it's how the game behaves. I mean, look at Quakespasm. It's the closest to Vanilla there is, and is flexible with mods. I wish we could get a Doomspasm. I just hate Quantization noise, since audio cannot fade in or out properly because of it. Lower frequencies are not allowed to be heard alone in 8-bit either, since noise is played over it.

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7 hours ago, SeanTheBermanator said:

Alright I am using Eternity. Thanks everyone for telling me about that one. Looking around is a bit janky, though; but it is nice to see a Vanilla based engine allowing 16-bit audio. I provided the sound mod for anyone who wants to give it a go. 

Doom_Sound_Bulb.zip

 

There's an option in the menu for turning, make sure to enable that.

 

I'd also recommend making sure you're using the latest devbuild, the last stable version available right now is a bit outdated. Make sure you grab its midiproc.exe and put it into the devbuild's folder.

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I think you made a good decision, Eternity has proven to be a pretty nice port also, it just feels so smooth.

Have you messed around with Edge? ~ it's the Quakiest port I've checked out yet, in the past several; I don't mean that in a bad way either.

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I'm glad to announce that Crispy Doom supports playback of 16-bit WAV since today's snapshot thanks to SmileTheory!

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1 hour ago, SeanTheBermanator said:

Um, yeah they don't work as of yet.

 

Well, today's snapshot hasn't even been published, try again tomorrow. ;)

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On 12/6/2019 at 5:49 PM, SeanTheBermanator said:

@Dark PulseI am told that GZDoom is nothing like the original game, unless that is just being said by scummy purists. Is GZDoom at least close to vanilla? I just don't feel like saying "I completed Doom" when I played a version that works different from the original release. I can't play without my HD sounds, I got too used to them. Don't make it like I am being stupid, I am just going by what I am told.

As long as you didn't rebind any keys that weren't bound by default, and didn't turn on "always mouselook", you were pretty close. For GZDoom, there is also the excellent Vanilla Essence mod that allows you to very quickly enable the whole "vanilla style" with the push of a button. You still get your neat sounds that way, and you don't have to step away from your usual sourceport.

 

If you're absolutely worried about purism, try playing the game in Chocolate Doom. It's the closest you can get to the 1994 DOS engine without running DOSBOX. The Sprite Fixing Project and Perkristan's sound effects still work with that. Plus there's some really neat "vanilla mods", like Rekkr and D4V, that use that port as a baseline.

Alternatively, Crispy Doom's current stable release has proper autoload (useful for the linked enhancement mods), it has a bunch of nice engine enhancements, which are all optional. By default it runs "Stock doom" + bug fixes + a higher resolution. You can set for yourself how "enhanced" you want your Doom to be, with the port being very clear about what is stock and what is not (eg the more green text you have in your "Crispness" screen, the further away from Vanilla you are).  It's my personal favorite for running vanilla compatible stuff, esp. since I can just turn off all the enhancements, including the increased resolution, and just have it load up a pwad whilst it autoloads the sprite fixes and sound packs for me.

 

PrBoom+ supports 'as vanilla' but that already requires a bit more fiddling with the correct complevels (eg using the -complevel 2 and -complevel 3 command lines, as by default PrBoom+ runs Boom). In my personal experience, I found it to be a bit of a weird bastard between GZDoom and Crispy. I know for a lot of others it's the sweet spot but centrism is for cowards if you want to go vanilla, just... go vanilla. You have those options. Embrace the fact that you can't run it at a fancy widescreen resolution with the increased FOV. Embrace that 1994 doom was built upon compromises upon compromises which all subsequent source ports have tried to remedy. Experience that despite being incredibly technologically limited it still is a fun game. Or reject that entirely, in which case GZDoom is for you!

Edited by Grizzly

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Funny thing is that I just tried possibly the first slaughter release for Quake in a Quakespasm fork, and it sounded horrible. Then again, Quake in particular always had a very low technical quality of sounds, even though it's not that noticeable most of the time.

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1 hour ago, Da Werecat said:

Funny thing is that I just tried possibly the first slaughter release for Quake in a Quakespasm fork, and it sounded horrible. Then again, Quake in particular always had a very low technical quality of sounds, even though it's not that noticeable most of the time.

What, you mean my sound effects for Quake?

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They exist?

 

No, I just made a passing mention of my experience with stock sounds in Quakespasm. Speaking of your sound effects, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that the old attempt at HD sounds for Doom sounded off. I'm yet to try yours, but it is nice that an alternative exists.

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3 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

They exist?

 

No, I just made a passing mention of my experience with stock sounds in Quakespasm. Speaking of your sound effects, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that the old attempt at HD sounds for Doom sounded off. I'm yet to try yours, but it is nice that an alternative exists.

Yep, the quake ones exist on ModDB. Quake Sound Bulb.

As for the doom sounds, you should go to this topic.

 

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