PrBoom+ 2.6.66 (Jun 20, 2023)

I use this version of PRBoom+: https://github.com/coelckers/prboom-plus

How do find the CRC-32 of my wad

I use ZDL, I run TNT as an IWAD

I get the error as soon as I attempt to start the game, although sometimes the game will launch just fine.

Is it the official v2.6.2 32-bit build? The page you linked to lists eight releases.
There are many utils that will calculate the CRC-32 checksum. 7-Zip is one, FileMenu Tools is another. Install either, then right-click in Windows Explorer on the file you want to checksum -- there will be a new submenu.

"signal 11" is a generic error that usually corresponds to a segfault. Things that may cause a segfault are bad map data, graphics in the wrong format and corrupted data entries in a WAD. Either your TNT.WAD is bad or you have your frontend load some additional WAD(s) that prb+ doesn't like.

Try unpacking the release archive into a new folder, copying your TNT.WAD there and double-clicking the prboom-plus exec. It should pick TNT automatically. Does it still crash?

Another, though an unlikely one, reason you get a segfault could be a problem with your display drivers and the chosen video resolution/mode. In that case you could try deleting prboom-plus.cfg and running prb+ with all settings at their defaults - 8-bit software renderer, 640x480, windowed.

9 hours ago, ForeskinJohn said:

I use this version of PRBoom+: https://github.com/coelckers/prboom-plus

 

How do find the CRC-32 of my wad

 

I use ZDL, I run TNT as an IWAD

 

I get the error as soon as I attempt to start the game, although sometimes the game will launch just fine.

Try Doom2 as IWAD.

So, an update, ive since started my computer back up, just for the issue to stop happening, i wanna thank everyone for the quick replies and if anything else comes of this ill be sure to head this way

Quick question: is it normal to get z-fighting in the latest dev build of PRBOOM+ UMAPINFO? This is particularly noticeable with large groups of chaingunners and their chainguns.  

Thanks!

41 minutes ago, nobleflame said:

Quick question: is it normal to get z-fighting in the latest dev build of PRBOOM+ UMAPINFO? This is particularly noticeable with large groups of chaingunners and their chainguns.  

 

Thanks!

Check your config file for the following setting:

sprites_doom_order

Ensure it is set to "1"; if you still have problems you can try setting "2" and see if it is resolved.

Hello!  I have a question regarding demo functionality as it relates to -recordfrom.  If I start recording a demo from a saved game using that parameter and press Home (which is bound to Restart Level/Demo), it goes back to the beginning of the first map in the WAD rather than where the saved game started.  Is this a known issue, and is there any way it can be addressed?

22 hours ago, JadingTsunami said:

 

Check your config file for the following setting:

 

sprites_doom_order

 

Ensure it is set to "1"; if you still have problems you can try setting "2" and see if it is resolved.

Setting it to 2 completely fixed this. 

Just out of interest, why did setting it to 2 fix it? It was already on 1, but I kept getting z-fighting. Thanks!

So, there's something I have a question about: In the list of things in the latest release, there's "relaxed "IWAD tag not present" error to a warning, which allows loading REKKR IWAD" but is that for the old one or Sunken Land? And if it's for the latter, how would I get it to run without the "InitTextures: 934 errors" popping up?

That's for the original release. I never tried Sunken Land. 

Edit: Please try to change the file extension from .iwad to .wad. 

5 hours ago, fabian said:

That's for the original release. I never tried Sunken Land. Edit: Please try to change the file extension from .iwad to .wad. 

Do I need to run it with Doom or anything? It gave me the "InitTextures: 935 errors" message if I try to run it as a .wad file by itself. I even have the .deh file with it, but that didn't seem to help either. 

Something I've only recently noticed, and which seems to be present in all versions I've tested, is that sounds seem to stutter or update unevenly, made most obvious with the chaingun. I did find one instance of someone mentioning this from a few years ago but the examples they provided made it hard to tell. I'm unsure if this is hardware related, something in the settings or what but I wonder if it's the same for others, and if so, what the culprit could be because the more I try and ignore it the more I hear it.

6 minutes ago, Lippeth said:

Something I've only recently noticed, and which seems to be present in all versions I've tested, is that sounds seem to stutter or update unevenly, made most obvious with the chaingun. I did find one instance of someone mentioning this from a few years ago but the examples they provided made it hard to tell. I'm unsure if this is hardware related, something in the settings or what but I wonder if it's the same for others, and if so, what the culprit could be because the more I try and ignore it the more I hear it.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

This was fixed recently. If the issue persists on a newer build with the linked fix, feel free to open a GitHub issue.

I just built it today from their github which almost made it even more curious, but after reading through the issue you linked, doing a combination of two things seems to fix it for me, or at least made the stutter nearly invisible to my ears: For one, my sound system's sample rate was different than what the config defaults to so I just set them both to 44100, which actually helped a fair bit but not completely, so I set slice_samplecount to 128 (instead of the 256 they recommended) and while I think it's still not absolutely 100%, the stutter is so small that I can easily forget about it with general play.

Thanks for the help!

Is there an option to start recording demos from level start because i refuse to type a command in command prompt every 5 seconds

2 minutes ago, TheWatcher041 said:

Is there an option to start recording demos from level start because i refuse to type a command in command prompt every 5 seconds

As far as I know... no. You'd either have to use a launcher or the -record command.

7 hours ago, TheWatcher041 said:

Is there an option to start recording demos from level start because i refuse to type a command in command prompt every 5 seconds

In case you weren’t aware, you can use the up and down arrow keys to cycle through your command history. So if you want to repeat your previous command, it’s as simple as up, enter. 

This is one of my favorite sourceports, but the choppy chainsaw animations bug me. It's been discussed in this thread and I'm aware it's due to demo compatibility reasons, but also there are ways to separate game logic and visual effects, to have smooth weapon animations while also having the game think nothing has changed. 

Quote

You could run an emulation of the original sway logic in the background for demo compatibility while visually swaying the weapon however you want it.  This has the upside of being able to do other things, like lessening or turning off visible sway.

I'm aware that dsda has this option:

Quote

Recent versions of dsda-doom have made the weapon and view bobbing a purely visual effect, so they can be turned on/off without affecting demo compatibility (the game logic behaves as if it's turned on, like what #1 in AlexMax's post says). It stands to reason that smoothing the chainsaw bobbing could be done similarly. 

...so what are the chances we'll get it as an option in PrBoom+?

Okay, complete noob here to PrBoom+. I'm really trying to branch out and accept any other source port besides GZDoom for map-making reasons, but I cannot for the life of me get on board with PrBoom+. Maybe I've been spoiled by all the features that GZDoom has, menu-wise, but I am really losing patience with PrBoom+. Is there a reason why PrBoom+'s menus are set up the way they are? I use GZDoom's menus with a keyboard mostly, but I'm so accustomed to hitting the Esc key to go back. Menus are paged, rather than dynamically scrollable like GZDoom. I can adjust my Gamma/Brightness(PrBoom+ by default is dark, and my LCD monitor gamma/brightness is already turned up). I don't feel like I have control of the sound/UI as well, either. 

There's also the issue of not being able to just launch from ZDL 3 with external files running alongside it. Maybe I'm ignorant to the fact that the mods are for ZDoom/GZDoom and they're not compatible(in this case, Smooth Doom).I tried launching a WAD that was built with BOOM format, but PrBoom+ spits out an error(Signaling Error: 11?). Not to mention, any maps from external files do not override/patch the original maps. MAP01 is always Entryway and not the map from the external WAD. 

I don't know. If someone could explain this to me better so I can make a decision to just stick with GZDoom or broaden my horizons, that'd be great. I'll go ahead and mention that maps I create, I genuinely do not care about people speedrunning them. As long as the map works as intended, trying to drill down on understanding complevels and their vast intricacies does not really interest me if I have to painstakingly understand all of this. 

Apologies if I sound grumpy. This has been something I've tried to figure out on my own, but nothing is clicking and I'm ready to clear this obstacle. If leaving people behind because they can't launch GZDoom long enough to play my map, then so be it.

41 minutes ago, Powerhouse Willington said:

There's also the issue of not being able to just launch from ZDL 3 with external files running alongside it. Maybe I'm ignorant to the fact that the mods are for ZDoom/GZDoom and they're not compatible(in this case, Smooth Doom).I tried launching a WAD that was built with BOOM format, but PrBoom+ spits out an error(Signaling Error: 11?). Not to mention, any maps from external files do not override/patch the original maps. MAP01 is always Entryway and not the map from the external WAD.

ZDL works with any source port. Smooth Doom is a ZDoom mod. Signal 11 is a crash, specifically a segfault, though that says very little about the root cause; most likely there's something wrong with the wad you're loading. GZDoom tends to be more tolerant of malformed wads than other source ports.

Couldn't you just make Boom-compatible maps and play them in GZDoom?

47 minutes ago, dasho said:

Couldn't you just make Boom-compatible maps and play them in GZDoom?

I could, but I never use the format. I think I'm getting hung up on the common saying that the more niche the format, the fewer people will play your maps. I think trying to take the broadest approach to catering to everyone is cluttering how I want to go about map making. If I don't go for what UDMF offers, I'd probably take the "No Rest for the Living" route where it's Vanilla format(I believe), which is just an increase in linedefs for more detail. I'm more interested in the visual than I am the gimmick when it comes to mapping. 

On 4/20/2022 at 5:00 PM, Powerhouse Willington said:

Okay, complete noob here to PrBoom+. I'm really trying to branch out and accept any other source port besides GZDoom for map-making reasons, but I cannot for the life of me get on board with PrBoom+. Maybe I've been spoiled by all the features that GZDoom has, menu-wise, but I am really losing patience with PrBoom+. Is there a reason why PrBoom+'s menus are set up the way they are? I use GZDoom's menus with a keyboard mostly, but I'm so accustomed to hitting the Esc key to go back. Menus are paged, rather than dynamically scrollable like GZDoom. I can adjust my Gamma/Brightness(PrBoom+ by default is dark, and my LCD monitor gamma/brightness is already turned up). I don't feel like I have control of the sound/UI as well, either.

Right off the bat, I would recommend switching to DSDA since it's the more modern fork of the Boom family (unfortunately the devs dropped the "prboom" name but it's really the successor to prboom+um). PrBoom+ menus are set up this way because they carry over from the original Boom & MBF, which Prboom+/DSDA is a continuation of in many ways. You can change the menu background to transparent by setting "Fullscreen Menu Background" to no in General Options. That might help make you feel a little more at home already. Make sure to set the "Sector Light Mode" in General under OpenGL options to "Shaders" for improving the brightness. And no, SmoothDoom does not work with anything but Zdoom-derived ports. The thing with hitting backspace rather than esc to go back in the menu is just a quirk of prboom that you get used to. Can't help you with the file loading i'm afraid since i always use batch files or the command prompt and i know that's not for everyone. A lot of the joy of handling a port like DSDA is in using complevels and tweaking things rather than completely overhauling the gameplay experience and visuals.

Switching from GZDoom to a PrBoom-derived port can be tough at first. Was the same for me. I hated PrBoom+, its menus, how it looked and how much it limited my ability to change everything to my liking. For instance, i always had the chaingun on RMB, but PrBoom+ didn't allow mapping weapons to mouse buttons at the time. I only switched ports when DSDA came out, because it included a lot of the features PRBoom+ lacked that i considered dealbreakers. But in the end, you don't play DSDA/PrBoom+ for its fancy bells&whistles. You play it for the more authentic feel and handling that it brings when compared to GZDoom, besides speedrunning and demo recording. There's a certain beauty to its simplicity and the feeling of playing wads the way they're "meant to be played". Or to put it slightly more combatively: GZDoom is for casuals, Prboom+ for purists.

If you are serious about "broadening your horizon" than you must accept that other ports are not trying to be like GZDoom. They generally go for more of a vanilla feel but without being all barebones vanilla like Crispy or Chocolate. GZDoom is a great port, though, and i still use it all the time.

On 4/21/2022 at 7:20 PM, Gregor said:

 

Right off the bat, I would recommend switching to DSDA since it's the more modern fork of the Boom family (unfortunately the devs dropped the "prboom" name but it's really the successor to prboom+um). PrBoom+ menus are set up this way because they carry over from the original Boom & MBF, which Prboom+/DSDA is a continuation of in many ways. You can change the menu background to transparent by setting "Fullscreen Menu Background" to no in General Options. That might help make you feel a little more at home already. Make sure to set the "Sector Light Mode" in General under OpenGL options to "Shaders" for improving the brightness. And no, SmoothDoom does not work with anything but Zdoom-derived ports. The thing with hitting backspace rather than esc to go back in the menu is just a quirk of prboom that you get used to. Can't help you with the file loading i'm afraid since i always use batch files or the command prompt and i know that's not for everyone. A lot of the joy of handling a port like DSDA is in using complevels and tweaking things rather than completely overhauling the gameplay experience and visuals.

 

Switching from GZDoom to a PrBoom-derived port can be tough at first. Was the same for me. I hated PrBoom+, its menus, how it looked and how much it limited my ability to change everything to my liking. For instance, i always had the chaingun on RMB, but PrBoom+ didn't allow mapping weapons to mouse buttons at the time. I only switched ports when DSDA came out, because it included a lot of the features PRBoom+ lacked that i considered dealbreakers. But in the end, you don't play DSDA/PrBoom+ for its fancy bells&whistles. You play it for the more authentic feel and handling that it brings when compared to GZDoom, besides speedrunning and demo recording. There's a certain beauty to its simplicity and the feeling of playing wads the way they're "meant to be played". Or to put it slightly more combatively: GZDoom is for casuals, Prboom+ for purists.

If you are serious about "broadening your horizon" than you must accept that other ports are not trying to be like GZDoom. They generally go for more of a vanilla feel but without being all barebones vanilla like Crispy or Chocolate. GZDoom is a great port, though, and i still use it all the time.

I'm finally getting a chance to respond to this. 

This will more than likely be the best answer I'll get, which is entirely a good thing. I've been switching between different forks of PrBoom+(PrBoom+, Crispy, DSDA) over the last couple of days, and I can see the minor differences between them. That said, I think I'll stick to GZDoom because of how expansive it allows DOOM to be. The graphical improvements alone are a big deal. Control over many other options is also a deal-breaker. I've concluded there's ultimately nothing wrong with PrBoom and its forks, but keeping DOOM in its vanilla/Chocolate state feels very restrictive. I can appreciate the appeal, but it's not for me. I appreciate your response and it's helped a lot in understanding why others might choose this over limit-removing ports like GZDoom.

23 minutes ago, Powerhouse Willington said:

different forks of PrBoom+(PrBoom+, Crispy, DSDA)

FYI, Crispy Doom is a fork of Chocolate Doom, not of PrBoom+.

On 4/24/2022 at 12:57 PM, Powerhouse Willington said:

I'm finally getting a chance to respond to this. 

This will more than likely be the best answer I'll get, which is entirely a good thing. I've been switching between different forks of PrBoom+(PrBoom+, Crispy, DSDA) over the last couple of days, and I can see the minor differences between them. That said, I think I'll stick to GZDoom because of how expansive it allows DOOM to be. The graphical improvements alone are a big deal. Control over many other options is also a deal-breaker. I've concluded there's ultimately nothing wrong with PrBoom and its forks, but keeping DOOM in its vanilla/Chocolate state feels very restrictive. I can appreciate the appeal, but it's not for me. I appreciate your response and it's helped a lot in understanding why others might choose this over limit-removing ports like GZDoom.

Glad i could be of help. Don't worry too much about what port you're using. GZDoom does have a compatibility menu after all where you can tweak things to the point where it behaves very similar to vanilla: "Doom Strict" for mapsets that require complevel 2, Boom Strict for complevel 9 and MBF Strict for complevel 11; plus, just like DSDA (but unlike PrBoom+ unfortunately), it also includes support for the new MBF21 standard as well (as do Eternity and Woof).

Having said that (wall of text in-coming), GZDoom isn't as customizable as you might think, and there are certain features where DSDA beats GZDoom at its own game. For instance, in DSDA there's a "mouselook" option that you can map to any key. You press it and it activates mouselook(duh), you press it again, it turns it off and re-centers the view. With GZDoom you have to hold down the key to keep mouselook activated (and have lockspring activated for it to re-center the view afterwards). You have to set up an alias in the console to get the same behaviour as in DSDA. But how many new players know how to do that?

Here's a list of some of the other things that DSDA features that i can't do without at this point, but GZDoom lacks.

- The options that lets you see the remaining monsters in the map through walls, which can be mapped to any key; handy when you're always going for 100% kills

- The pistolstart parameter that makes you start any map from a pistolstart by default, instead of having to use idclev at the beginning of each map + the restart button that let's you quickly restart the map at any point

- The ability to let you filter textures and sprites independently; in GZDoom, when you activate texture filtering it filters the entire screen, and while filtered textures can look nice, God knows nothing looks more awful than filtered sprites; DSDA lets you filter textures but keep the sprites crispy

- The rewind option that let's you rewind your game in-game with a button press, very useful for practicing tricky sections without having to reload all the time

- The ability to make quicksaves in-game (without opening the menu) by storing and reloading key frames in RAM

- The "Advanced Hud" - a neat little Boom-style menu that that pops up over the status bar whenever you want, showing kill, items, secret count plus a timer, very handy for speedruns but also for casual play - you can see it in decino's videos, who has it switched on all the time

- The fact DSDA automatically organizes your saves on a per wad, per mod list basis

- The fact that the automap functions like in vanilla Doom where you can overlay and/or rotate the map while you're in the automap with a button press (by default O and R), while GZDoom's implementation requires you to go to the options each time (can't be toggled in-game) and turn overlay and rotate on and off each time... lame! You also can't zoom in or out in GZDoom while the map is overlayed, rendering the whole option pretty much useless

- the fact that you can get 100% kills (or over 100%) on maps that feature an Icon of Sin just like in vanilla Doom -  100% monsters refers to the amount of monsters present in the map on start-up, so you should be able to get over 100% through the Icon of Sin spawing new ones; not happening in GZDoom

- the fact that Lost Souls, as intended, don't count towards the kill count

- The ability to activate health bars above enemies; gimmicky but sometimes useful when you're chipping away at distant enemies

- The ability to map any cheat, like idclip, to its own button in the options and toggle it on and off at will; GZDoom, again, requires the use of aliases for this

Couple all this with the fact that GZDoom's movement code handles inaccurately compared to vanilla Doom (SR50 and wallrunning "work" but are far less reliable), it "corrects" a lot of old maps i don't want to have "corrected" (glitches and bugs, some of which where put in on purpose by the map makers), that it runs like crap on most laptops (which means i can only use it on my PC, and not on my notebook when i'm on vacation or visiting friends), and the fact that it obviously completely sucks when it comes to speedrunning and demo recording/playing,

and GZDoom doesn't look like the perfect package anymore. At least to me. It's still great overall, but not without some major downsides. Of course it also has a lot of advantages, but everybody knows all about those, so i don't have to list them. ;)

One final thing that bugs me about GZDoom in general is that it teaches new players that Doom should be played with all the bells & whistles turned on all the time; with mouselook, crosshair and jumping on by default (all features that DSDA also has btw), lots of texture filtering and, of course, lots and lots of mods. Making it very difficult for a lot of them to appreciate the more vanilla experience which the vast majority of wads that are being made are going for.

In many ways, GZDoom is to other sourceports what Brutal Doom is to vanilla gameplay.

Sure, you can set it up to look and handle more vanilla but how many people are gonna take the time and do that, let alone know how to do that when they are new to the game? Especially with some of the necessary options (like the entire compatibility menu!) hidden away in the "full" menu, which most player are not gonna bother with or even know it exits.

Having said all that, GZDoom is of course an absolute powerhouse of a sourceport and I'm glad it exists, but it's far from perfect. Fortunately, we don't have to pick between GZDoom and DSDA; we can use both. ;)

wait - dsda can show health bars over monsters? 

which setting does this in the cfg file?

6 minutes ago, Delfino Furioso said:

wait - dsda can show health bars over monsters? 

which setting does this in the cfg file?

Health_Bar under Prboom-plus misc settings.

You can also just activate it in-game in General options under OpenGL options.

8 minutes ago, Delfino Furioso said:

wait - dsda can show health bars over monsters? 

which setting does this in the cfg file?

I'm not sure where it would be in the cfg file, but I'm pretty sure it also shows up in the General settings menu somewhere.

ah it's a feature of the opengl renderer since glboom+ and it shows up only after the monster has taken damage

thank you guys