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OnyxStar

PRBoom demo walkcam added

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Hi everyone, I've been paying close attention to the HR2 demopack thread. While reading through it, something caught my attention. There was a discussion about whether some monsters had survived in a few demos, and how that could be checked out. Someone suggested using the Eternity engine with the demo walkcam.

I had never heard of it before, and I've been watching these demos for a few months now. (Yes, I'm pretty new to the doom demo scene here...) I thought it would be sweet to run around while the demo was playing. So, I headed over to the eternity website, and of course the link for the engine isn't working.

I know a thing or two about programming, so I figured I could try and add it into one of the other ports out there. The obvious choice was prboom, because of its demo compatability. I had never touched any doom source code before, so I was quite lost for a while. Then, I noticed that the prboom team must have thought about working on a demo walkcam, because there is already some code in there for it.

Jumping ahead, I have added the walkcam myself. The code isnt very pretty, since I know so little about what's really going on in the engine, but it does work. Here are the main features, many of which just happened to work. (The sign of a well put together engine)

-Movement is almost identical to player movement. However, there is no "fine touch" to it. When you let off the controls, you stop. The player would stop fast, but with a little slide. Also, if you fall off a cliff, you are placed immediately on the ground.

-It is always in a non clipping state. So, you can run around through everything. (Walls, monsters, etc.)

-If you lose the player, you can press the attack button to find him. It puts you exactly where he is, looking the same way. If you hold attack, you will follow his movements exactly.

-You can move while the demo is paused. For some reason, it seems to really cut the framerate. (Not too bad though) Probably some internal thing I don't yet know about.

-You can use the map, and enter the 'iddt' cheats. I thought for sure this wasn't going to work, but it does. I'm pretty sure you have to be in 'map mode' to enter the codes though.

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That's about it. I was having a good time watching the hr2 demos while wandering around. I'd pause on occasion to see a rocket suspended in mid-air, or to see a bunch of enemies getting fried by the BFG.

Ok, here's where you would expect to find a link, but I have a question before I post it.

PRBoom isn't my creation at all. Can I just edit the code and post a new exe? This probably sounds dumb to some of you, but I have no idea. PRBoom is an excellent tool, and I don't want to go against the wishes of its creators. I'm sure some of you would like to watch demos like this, so any advice here would be great.

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OnyxStar said:

-If you lose the player, you can press the attack button to find him. It puts you exactly where he is, looking the same way. If you hold attack, you will follow his movements exactly.


Now this is neat! Very useful when the player teleports.

I think it's OK to release the modified version, there was a hack to the eternity engine already, but I don't know for sure.

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I'm pretty ignorant about the ins-and-outs of all this, but Prboom is made available under the GNU General Public License, so you should read the file called "Copying.txt" in the Prboom package to see what the rules are. Here's a relevant passage:

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: (and then it gives the conditions, which I won't quote in full, since they go on a bit)


Anyway, this sounds like a very nice piece of work. I don't know why Eternity's download links have been broken for so long.

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Which version of prboom did you modify? 2.2.4 is the latest version with demo compatability. Anyway sounds very handy :)

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If you have a patch (something external), I don't think you have any requirements. (but a note of thanks/credit to the Prboom team would be nice and documentation for your release saying which version of Prboom you intend your exe to patch, etc...)
If you are modifying the code in prboom and recompiling, I believe that according to the GPL license, you need to release your source as well, and have documentation crediting PrBoom in your release.
outside of that, I think you're in the clear.
of course, you could just ask the developers to see what they say. perhaps they could just analyze your enhancements and incorporate them into the next release...
sounds great, btw!

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Ok, I've read through all the GNU stuff, and have decided to post the new exe. As near as I can tell, I just have to post the source as well, which I will do with a separate zip file.

Make sure you take a look at the readme file, it has everything you need to know.

The exe can be downloaded from: http://www.geocities.com/hammer81z/walk_prboom.zip

The source link is: http://www.geocities.com/hammer81z/walk_prsrc.zip

Hmmm, just tested these in a preview post, and they don't work. But, if you copy and paste the links into the address bar, they work. If that doesn't work, let me know and maybe someone in these forums can host it.

Please let me know how it runs. I've only been able to test it on my computer. I can't see where any problems would arise, but I'd like this to work for everyone, so let me know. Oh, and keep those awesome demos coming! =)

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Grazza said:

Anyway, this sounds like a very nice piece of work. I don't know why Eternity's download links have been broken for so long.


I can field this question. Due to my server crashing all data was lost, which included user accounts. Quasar has refused to upload beta5 again, despite me asking him and telling him that people keep asking for it and wondering why the links won't work. His reason is that people can just wait for beta6, since it's coming out "soon". The last time he said anything about this was over 2 weeks ago. It's been over a month since the crash. Based on Quasar's past beta schedules, I can imagine it will be a while longer before anyone sees beta6.

If anyone has the beta5 files I'd be more than happy to put them up.

And on a topic note, this demo walkcam idea sounds really great. Just so I'm clear, this means you can walk through a demo while it's playing and see the player moving around and doing stuff? And when it's paused, all action is paused but you (the walkcam) can still move around? That's really fucking cool.

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Mancubus II said:

If anyone has the beta5 files I'd be more than happy to put them up.

Yes, I've got a copy, and shall e-mail it to you shortly.

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Linguica said:

Nice, these are the sort of hacks that I wish we had more of.


yeah, exporting to mpg or avi would also be cool

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Grazza said:

Yes, I've got a copy, and shall e-mail it to you shortly.


Got 'em and uploaded them, thanks!

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This is yet another ultra-cool enhancement for DOOM.
I'm sure some are disappointed it is a modified 2.30 instead of 2.2.4, but still cool since it is just meant for watching demos.
thanks, OnyxStar.

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I've had no problems playing demos* (played some Endgame and HR2 demos). It's great to just park on a ledge and watch the action, or watch it from the monsters perspective.



*I wasn't sure how compatible 2.3 is with Doom2.exe demos

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It has worked for me OK so far, though I have only watched a handful of demos with it.

Even though 2.3.0 is an experimental release, I don't think it's meant to have poor demo compatibility - it's just less extensively tested. Indeed, it has a lot of compatibility modes that 2.2.x lacked (though the documentation of this isn't too good).

The only time I had a problem was when I paused during playback, and started fiddling around with the compatibility options. When I put them back the way they had been and tried to unpause, the program didn't want to know - which is hardly surprising.

The camera movement feels quite slow - I'm used to the faster movement of the Eternity walkcam. It's nice and fast if you use timedemo though. The fire-button feature is great - an excellent idea.

Oh, and now that Eternity 3.31 beta5 is available for download again, I've uploaded schepe's cool hack to my webspace again (there hadn't seemed much point keeping it there, given that you also need the Eternity package to make use of it).

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Well, I spent the last few hours adding a few things to the walkcam. The readme file explains it all in detail, but here is a short summary.

You can press 'use' to look directly at the player. Could be helpful sometimes, but it's basically just neat. (Circle strafe around him, etc.)

There are console variables that will allow you to change the speed of the camera's movement and turning. They will save to your config file, so you wont have to constantly adjust them.

Finally, you no longer have a slowdown when pausing the demo. It runs at the same framerate.

http://www.geocities.com/hammer81z/walk_prboom2.zip

I hope that helps some of you out. I noticed some complaints about the speed, which is fine. I had wanted to make that adjustable anyway. Just had to learn how. =)

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Grazza said:

The camera movement feels quite slow - I'm used to the faster movement of the Eternity walkcam.


With always run set in the config file it seems ok, it doesn't appear in the menus.

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mewse said:

crap, geocities.

When a Geocities link is given, it might be best if "Automatically parse URLs" is turned off, so that people have to cut and paste the address, rather than clicking on the link (which generates an error for a lot of people). Thus:

http://www.geocities.com/hammer81z/walk_prboom2.zip

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The geocities direct link (not copy pasted) works fine here.

This walkcam looks really great... would be cool to add 'flying mode' to the cam ala Heretic/Hexen.
Or I wonder if someone can even record the movements of the cam to record movie like Doom2 Done Quick ...

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Doom2 Done Quick uses a special cam file (similar to the format of Quake's REMAiC tool) to move the camera -- it's not recorded manually. That's the sort of thing that would be best (plus not too hard to implement).

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mirrors just in case:

http://mewsemart.com/~mewse/walk_prboom2.zip
http://mewsemart.com/~mewse/walk_prsrc.zip

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