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Eurisko

The Unity Port Thread - PS/Xbox/Switch/IOS/Android

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I dont really see that as a problem, they would still need to be redownloaded if loaded the normal way so nothing is changed. User would still get the experience of an error when trying to load it. I also think such a breaking change in the engine would be avoided as much as possible.

 

The actual issue I can think of now is savegame handling. If the main menu is no longer associated with a specific Doom wad/iwad then it would have to show the saves for every wad in the "Load Game" list or also break them up with a wad selection menu.

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For what it's worth, the Save/Load menus already have to deal with showing all save files regardless of add-ons, and also handle it just fine.

DOOM_20201129_11-28-41-673.png.13505016656ed9975d19d6a9c5cc0ba9.png

 

That said, thinking on how saves currently function, it'd be useful to show a thumbnail of the add-on that the save belongs to!

Edited by Lollie

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Here is my complains about the Unity port.

 

1- The lack of online multiplayer. HUGE missed opportunity for an easy way to play online. I have no idea why this was not implemented. Would have been great to be able to play over the internet with friends with no extra setup required. This alone would have made this port HUGE. Hell, even if it was only through friend invite.

 

2- No options for black bars instead of "whatever texture this is" when running the game in 4:3.

 

3- Local multiplayer on PC is kind of wonky given that that game assigns both the keyboard and first controller to player 1.

 

4- No way to have a crisp resolution on PC. 

 

That said, the port is still good but falls short due to it's lack of ambition in regards to multiplayer. I am still grateful for it thought since I can now play a very decent port on the Switch.

Edited by Thermal Lance

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12 hours ago, Lollie said:

For what it's worth, the Save/Load menus already have to deal with showing all save files regardless of add-ons, and also handle it just fine.

DOOM_20201129_11-28-41-673.png.13505016656ed9975d19d6a9c5cc0ba9.png

 

That said, thinking on how saves currently function, it'd be useful to show a thumbnail of the add-on that the save belongs to!

100% agree. This is also quite annoying to me.

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16 minutes ago, Thermal Lance said:

1- The lack of online multiplayer. HUGE missed opportunity for an easy way to play online. I have no idea why this was not implemented.

Would you be surprised if I told you the reason was that it's not that simple?

 

Doom's original multiplayer code is based on an extremely dated architecture. Since it pioneered multiplayer gaming, it can be excused for not making the bets technical choice. They got things right by the time they made Quake anyway.

 

They'd have to rework the netcode architecture to make it run on a client-server system, without breaking the game because it'd require rejigging many core system loops and that's always a risky proposition when you want to preserve demo compatibility, then they'd need to host their servers, offer match-making and stuff, hire community managers to handle the cheaters and abusers, etc.

 

Pretty easy to arrive to the conclusion that it's not worth it.

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13 minutes ago, Gez said:

Would you be surprised if I told you the reason was that it's not that simple?

 

Doom's original multiplayer code is based on an extremely dated architecture. Since it pioneered multiplayer gaming, it can be excused for not making the bets technical choice. They got things right by the time they made Quake anyway.

 

They'd have to rework the netcode architecture to make it run on a client-server system, without breaking the game because it'd require rejigging many core system loops and that's always a risky proposition when you want to preserve demo compatibility, then they'd need to host their servers, offer match-making and stuff, hire community managers to handle the cheaters and abusers, etc.

 

Pretty easy to arrive to the conclusion that it's not worth it.

Wouldn't it be easier to make a proper unity wraper for multiplayer, bundled along the solo play one?
Don't know how feasible is this, but if demo-compatibility is important for solo play, maybe its not that important for multiplayer?

Just played online long ago, and never take in account if there was some kind of demo compatibility running along.

How chocolate doom made multiplayer option possible with the internet of these days?
Asking on totally ignorance of the matter.


This conversation could led the developers to some viable options, maybe

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28 minutes ago, Gez said:

Would you be surprised if I told you the reason was that it's not that simple?

 

Doom's original multiplayer code is based on an extremely dated architecture. Since it pioneered multiplayer gaming, it can be excused for not making the bets technical choice. They got things right by the time they made Quake anyway.

 

They'd have to rework the netcode architecture to make it run on a client-server system, without breaking the game because it'd require rejigging many core system loops and that's always a risky proposition when you want to preserve demo compatibility, then they'd need to host their servers, offer match-making and stuff, hire community managers to handle the cheaters and abusers, etc.

 

Pretty easy to arrive to the conclusion that it's not worth it.

Never said it was easy. Still is a missed opportunity in my books. 

 

They do not need to host servers in between. All they needed to do is to make it through friend invite (direct connection with the PCs handling the server/client component on their own). That alone would have been enough. Matchmaking is not even necessary for this. And you don't need community managers if you're playing with your friends.

 

I don't want the full 2020 treatment. Just something functional that I can play with a friend or two. Bit, like with Blood: Fresh Supply. Right now, the only option with this port is remote play. And, while I don't want to sound unfair to the devs, it's honestly not even worth the trouble.

 

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Oh, I forgot to add. 

 

My main gripe with the Switch version. (I didn't try splitscreen on the pc yet so I dont know if it has the same thing.) Is that the splitscreen use like half the screen when playing with 2 players. It makes sense to be that size when playing with 4 players but with 2 players it's kind of a shame. There is a lot of wasted space here.

 

Other than that, I'm very satisfied with the port.

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6 hours ago, Thermal Lance said:

I don't want the full 2020 treatment. Just something functional that I can play with a friend or two. Bit, like with Blood: Fresh Supply.

So from the person who did Blood FSs multiplayer, your suggestion is quite ironic given its multiplayer is a direct example to the contrary. Because I was trying to rig up a new netcode into an engine that simply was never designed to synchronise that way, there's quite a few issues that remain that I never had time to fix, simply because of how much work the whole thing was. I had to squeeze what was probably a 2 year long project into about 9 months. 

 

This by extension also means the best way to play BloodFSs multiplayer is actually splitscreen. Which, hey the 2019 port has also! Funny that. 

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3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

So from the person who did Blood FSs multiplayer, your suggestion is quite ironic given its multiplayer is a direct example to the contrary. Because I was trying to rig up a new netcode into an engine that simply was never designed to synchronise that way, there's quite a few issues that remain that I never had time to fix, simply because of how much work the whole thing was. I had to squeeze what was probably a 2 year long project into about 9 months. 

 

This by extension also means the best way to play BloodFSs multiplayer is actually splitscreen. Which, hey the 2019 port has also! Funny that. 

Bummer. Guess It's back to spending half an hour (being generous) trying to explain to people how to run multiplayer. X_X

 

I still would love to see an official port with online play. And oddly enough... I never had THAT much issues with FS. It did screw up from time to time but overall I'd be happy with that kind of quality. Still beats having to use remote play.

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7 hours ago, Thermal Lance said:

They do not need to host servers in between. All they needed to do is to make it through friend invite (direct connection with the PCs handling the server/client component on their own). That alone would have been enough.

Oh and a note on this one: You'd think it were this simple but even this example requires servers. Tunnelling servers, to be precise.

Practically every computer nowadays is behind a NAT, which limits the ability to do direct connections. So to self-host a game you need some sort of service to setup connections between each player, which typically is handled in escalation. Fun fact, IPv6 was supposed to solve this but it turns out some ISPs are real dicks (and it's support roll out has been really slow). 

 

You first use UPnP and try connecting the players directly. Not every router has UPnP and people are unlikely to port forward as a backup (they also can't always port forward either! Some networks can have 2 or more gateways, preventing conventional port forwarding and service config from working), so if that doesn't work you then need to setup a hole-punch, which requires a remote server. Hole punching basically sets up an existing connection and then switches who you contact while using the existing socket, but not every router likes this and can shut off the socket completely the moment another player tries to contact it. 

So now what? We are all out if tricks so we have to take that existing server we used to set up the hole punch and just use it to route all the data for the whole duration of the game.

 

There's at least one current gen console that doesn't provide this service itself (take a guess), and if you want to do something sensible like cross platform multiplayer, you can't do any of this at all because none of the consoles allow direct connections between players on different platforms due to security (and getting that waived would be a huge challenge in itself), the traffic must be routed by your own services at all times. 

 

You can probably tell I have a lot of built up frustration over all these problems. :V

Edited by Edward850

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2 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Oh and a note on this one: You'd think it were this simple but even this example requires servers. Tunnelling servers, to be precise.

Practically every computer nowadays is behind a NAT, which limits the ability to do direct connections. So to self-host a game you need some sort of service to setup connections between each player, which typically is handled in escalation. Fun fact, IPv6 was supposed to solve this but it turns out some ISPs are real dicks (and it's support roll out has been really slow). 

 

You first use UPnP and try connecting the players directly. Not every router has UPnP and people are unlikely to port forward as a backup (they also can't always port forward either! Some networks can have 2 or more gateways, preventing conventional port forwarding and service config from working), so if that doesn't work you then need to setup a hole-punch, which requires a remote server. Hole punching basically sets up an existing connection and then switches who you contact while using the existing socket, but not every router likes this and can shut off the socket completely the moment another player tries to contact it. 

So now what? We are all out if tricks so we have to take that existing server we used to set up the hole punch and just use it to route all the data for the whole duration of the game.

Pardon my ignorance. I'm just a pleb with a pipe dream. Having an official port ( or recreate the multiplayer deathmatch in a more modern engine if it's easier than trying to fit the old engine in that hole.) is something I wish I could have in my gaming life. 

 

I do have Zandronum/ZDaemon/Odamex. Which is fine for playing with randoms but trying to bring new people in is kind of a nightmare.

 

 

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Hi everyone. Been completely out of the loop for a while. Had a bunch of personal stuff occur all at once and really have not been around any Doom at all. Not even played The Ancient Gods yet. 

Hope everyone here is all good, I'm trying to play catch up. 

So was REKKR the last wad released on the unity ports? if so what has happened? 

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1 minute ago, Eurisko said:

Hi everyone. Been completely out of the loop for a while. Had a bunch of personal stuff occur all at once and really have not been around any Doom at all. Not even played The Ancient Gods yet. 

Hope everyone here is all good, I'm trying to play catch up. 

So was REKKR the last wad released on the unity ports? 

Yeah, as far as I know REKKR is still the last one released. Can't wait for more, especially for my Switch.

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6 minutes ago, Eurisko said:

Hi everyone. Been completely out of the loop for a while. Had a bunch of personal stuff occur all at once and really have not been around any Doom at all. Not even played The Ancient Gods yet. 

Hope everyone here is all good, I'm trying to play catch up. 

So was REKKR the last wad released on the unity ports? if so what has happened? 

REKKR was indeed the last one released. Following the release schedule so far we’re a couple weeks past due for a new one, but Sponge explained that they’re having some hold-ups on both their first and second place wads they’re trying to add, so hopefully there will be something in the next couple weeks.

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Just now, Faceman2000 said:

REKKR was indeed the last one released. Following the release schedule so far we’re a couple weeks past due for a new one, but Sponge explained that they’re having some hold-ups on both their first and second place wads they’re trying to add, so hopefully there will be something in the next couple weeks.

 

Right ok that makes sense for what seems like years since I was last on here. I booted Doom up and didn't see any new add-ons I presumed something maybe wrong. 

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On 11/29/2020 at 2:27 PM, Thermal Lance said:

Here is my complains about the Unity port - No way to have a crisp resolution on PC

 

What do you mean by that? I play on a 1080 TV and the game looks very sharp. I wouldn't play Doom at anything higher than 1080. Are you talking about 1440 or higher?

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14 minutes ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

 

What do you mean by that? I play on a 1080 TV and the game looks very sharp. I wouldn't play Doom at anything higher than 1080. Are you talking about 1440 or higher?

The game dosen't run in true 1080p. I don't know the exact resolution is runs on. But, having the option would be nice. It feels like the game just upscale the resolution. It's not THAT bad but I wish I could have the image to be crisp just like when I use PrBoom+.

 

EDIT: I'm uploading a video on youtube to show you what I mean.

Edited by Thermal Lance

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Yeah, it looks like it is running in 2x vanilla resolution upscaled to desktop res. That's pretty good but it would be cool if it had a "High res" option that enables a resolution equivalent to the xbox360/ps3 port that was later ported to PC with the Doom 3 BFG edition, that one runs on 3x vanilla, which is 960x600. Although it can't be too easy to do that, some renderer limits are exposed as the resolution increases.

 

EDIT: The only addons available are Final Doom, NRFTL, Double Impact I think it's called, BTSX E1 and E2 and REKKR?

Edited by VGA

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22 minutes ago, VGA said:

EDIT: The only addons available are Final Doom, NRFTL, Double Impact I think it's called, BTSX E1 and E2 and REKKR?

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Official_add-ons

In Doom II, Sigil, Deathless, and No End In Sight are not available. In Doom 1, it's NRFTL which is not available.

 

It is kinda funny that you can run more stuff in Doom 1 than in Doom II, despite Doom II having more resources -- like you can run BTSX and Final Doom in Doom 1 for example, and they're full of Doom II things -- but that's how it goes. When the early add-ons were added, the engine was a bit more kludgy about playing add-ons built for the "other" IWAD so for example if you had an ExM8 effect where killing the boss ends the level, it had to be run in Doom 1 mode. Now the port is smarter about it so all the new add-ons from now on should be available for both; but the old add-ons haven't been updated.

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32 minutes ago, VGA said:

Yeah, it looks like it is running in 2x vanilla resolution upscaled to desktop res. That's pretty good but it would be cool if it had a "High res" option that enables a resolution equivalent to the xbox360/ps3 port that was later ported to PC with the Doom 3 BFG edition, that one runs on 3x vanilla, which is 960x600. 

 

I could be wrong, but I think it works the way it currently does because adding proper high res support may be too much work to do, I'm surprised we even got what we did honestly.

 

Some heavy work would be required to get that done and working well - more than #include "widescreen.h" for sure.

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It's 2x the vanilla resolution because any higher and the renderer starts to fall apart. It doesn't have the precision to handle drawing at such high resolutions, and it'll require a magnitude more CPU time as well given it now runs at 60FPS by default. 

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18 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

It's 2x the vanilla resolution because any higher and the renderer starts to fall apart. It doesn't have the precision to handle drawing at such high resolutions, and it'll require a magnitude more CPU time as well given it now runs at 60FPS by default. 

Thanks for the explanation. 

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SIGIL at 3x resolution was starting to have some FPS issues on the base PS4, even. An extra 33% of pixels of widescreen on top of 60FPS would've been pretty brutal at 3x. We lowered everything down to 2x to give a lot more overhead on perf, in addition to the aforementioned renderer issues with the vanilla renderer.

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15 hours ago, sponge said:

SIGIL at 3x resolution was starting to have some FPS issues on the base PS4, even. An extra 33% of pixels of widescreen on top of 60FPS would've been pretty brutal at 3x. We lowered everything down to 2x to give a lot more overhead on perf, in addition to the aforementioned renderer issues with the vanilla renderer.

A shame but totally understandable. The port is still very solid and I love it on my switch. Just bought Doom II as well. 

 

Well, I guess it leaves me with those two points.

 

- Black Bars for 4:3 instead of that texture that looks extremely distracting to me. Black borders, I think would be a better option.

 

- The whole "Keyboard and First Controller assigned to player 1" problem in split screen. Not a problem on my Switch but it would be cool for the PC version if this was fixed.

 

That's all I can think of.  

 

Have a great day.

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2 hours ago, Thermal Lance said:

Black Bars for 4:3 instead of that texture that looks extremely distracting to me. Black borders, I think would be a better option.

Curious that you mention this, since I'd say the majority of people who have a complaint about a 4:3 resolution often mention concerns about pixel burnout and stuff due to black bars on a widescreen.

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Thats a strange complaint to be the majority since OLED TVs are not nearly the most common, but it would still happen with any other static image, you'd just have the texture pattern baked in instead of a solid color.

 

Quote

The whole "Keyboard and First Controller assigned to player 1" problem in split screen. Not a problem on my Switch but it would be cool for the PC version if this was fixed.

The issue with the "fix" is that the game without UI changes cant magically know whether a mouse and keyboard player wants to be player 1 or if everyone wants to play on gamepads. If you "fix" it by making the gamepads always start from Player 2 then now it needs to be "fixed" for people who all play in front of a TV.

 

My suggestion would be separating the game starting from all players "Readying Up." Instead of the game starting when all connected gamepads have "Readied Up", we have to drop the assumption that the number of connected controllers = the number of players.

The game would be started by selecting "Start Game" from the menu or a different button like Start or Enter.

"Fire" would be used to join the lobby rather than "Ready Up". Any controllers (keyboard/mouse or gamepad) who didn't press Fire would not become a player. That way, if the game is started without a KBM player having pressed Fire, then controllers start from Player 1. If a KBM player pressed Fire before the game is started, then all controllers start from Player 2.

 

Halo 3 works in this way (despite not having KBM support, it supports arbitrary leaving out certain controllers); the player lobby can have players on any controllers enter and leave at any time and players in a splitscreen game do not correspond to the number of controllers connected. Instead the game is started when someone selects "Start Game" in the menu; any controller that didnt press A to join beforehand is simply left out of the game. Halo 1 and 2 used the premise of controllers connected = number of players while Halo 3 dropped this premise, likely because physically plugging or unplugging the controllers from Original Xbox was less convoluted than connecting or disconnecting wireless controllers on Xbox 360 and onward. So we can see a similar issue to this has already been solved in previous console games, and that assuming all connected controllers will be players is an outdated practice even in the gamepad-only console world.

 

To my recollection the Halo 3 way is how the PS3 port of classic doom worked, and it would solve this problem with keyboards as well. (on the UX side at least, controller to player remapping is a different technical issue but shouldnt be too tough unless the original implementation is a horrible hacky mess that does not pass controller number to each splitscreen instance as a parameter). I would even guess the functionality was a requirement or strong suggestion for Microsoft/Sony certification back in the 360/PS3 era due to how common it was to almost all splitscreen games I can remember from that gen.

Edited by Tarvis

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Just now getting into the Doom II Master Levels. Every one of them has the same music track. Was this as it was back on their original release in '95?

 

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