ZDoom 2.1.5 Released

Randy Heit has yet again managed to crank out another version of ZDoom for the fourth time in just over two months. Notably in this release is a vast update to the changelog including many new features, changes, and fixes. Among the changes is the return of Windows 95 compatibility and new ACS functions. For a complete listing of all changes, check the ZDoom homepage.

Dittohead said:

return of Windows 95 compatibility

Next stop, DOS!

deathz0r said:

Next stop, DOS!

It worked for win95c, and that's all versions. Hell, Zdoom will win on 8MB RAM.

EDIT: For some reason, the thought of JPEG texturing chaps my ass. Maybe the thought of some retard making his map "zdoom only" because he used one or two JPEGs for some door or something is too much for my brain to handle.

The more I think about it, the more I have to agree with AlexMax. I wasn't an advocate of standards but this has gone way too far.

Csonicgo said:

The more I think about it, the more I have to agree with AlexMax. I wasn't an advocate of standards but this has gone way too far.

What? So now it's off-limits to support anything but patch?

Csonicgo said:

EDIT: For some reason, the thought of JPEG texturing chaps my ass. Maybe the thought of some retard making his map "zdoom only" because he used one or two JPEGs for some door or something is too much for my brain to handle.

In that case, blame the retard, not the feature. If everything was approached from that angle we wouldn't have any progress at all.

Graf Zahl said:

In that case, blame the retard, not the feature. If everything was approached from that angle we wouldn't have any progress at all.

AS long as Zdoom always runs in software mode I'll be happy.

It really bites my ass that anyone would use fucking jpeg. Is it possible to support a shittier image format thats available for most all platforms?

Didn't it already support PNG and other formats? Why is JPG an issue? As if ZDoom didn't have a million features already that stary away from the "standards" (usually Doom or Boom).

I'm quite a purist but there's no point complaining about each feature added to ZDoom. It's not like you can't use something else, or that it now requires JPGs in PWADs.

The only reason I can see using JPG, is smaller filesizes while using high-res textures. Those things can get big pretty fast.

udderdude said:

The only reason I can see using JPG, is smaller filesizes while using high-res textures. Those things can get big pretty fast.

It would make sense to do it for that. I have a free Photoshop-like program called The G.I.M.P. that lets you save pictures in JPG and they'll still look great even though the file size is small. Some wads have huge texture files and the JPG could really help make them smaller.

I have a commercial Photoshop like programme called...Photoshop (omg) that allows me to save 8 bit PNG files that look great even though the file size is tiny. Amazing.

udderdude said:

The only reason I can see using JPG, is smaller filesizes while using high-res textures.

This is quite true.
The nature of most high-res textures would allow them to be compressed to a much smaller size than any PNG equivilant file.
However, knowing when to use JPEG over PNG or PNG over JPEG is apparently something most people in the Doom community know pretty much nothing about. I suggest you do some research before bashing the support of JPEG.

These are textures, so they're almost always going to be stretched and cropped before they get displayed to a player who will most likely run quickly by them without having time to notice any compression artifacts.

Besides, line art or anything else that looks worse when compressed with JPEG generally doesn't compress as well as it would using a lossless format. (That is, slime-floor textures would probably look alright with JPEG. Computer consoles should be compressed with PNG.)

Bumping this thread for the sole purpose of linking to this informative website

Read it, seriously.

There is no way in hell I would use jpeg for doom screenshots or screenshots of any other game. I mean no fucking way. I'll admit that it works well for photos and movie stills tho

HobbsTiger1 said:

There is no way in hell I would use jpeg for doom screenshots or screenshots of any other game.

For software Doom, I wouldn't recommend it. 256 color PNG or (God forbid) GIF is a much better idea.

However, for hardware accelerated ports (and any other hardware accelerated game), downsampling to 256 colors looks ugly, and true-color PNGs end up being huge. There I would definitely recommend JPG at a quality setting of 65-85. (Some programs use an opposite scale of "compression" and not "quality", in which case the compression would be 15-35.)