A couple of questions

To start, I am running ZDoom on my PC which has XP for an OS. I followed the instructions here about that and Doom runs. no problem. I do have a couple of questions tho if anyone can help.

1) while playing Doom/Doom2, the textures and flats all look fine, but the skies, where it shows looks horrible. I was wondering what's up with that? I assume this is a common occurance under these conditions?

2) I'm using ZDoom to play various maps, I use the very convienient method of dragging the wad file I want to play onto the ZDoom icon on my desktop. Works fine. However, I find myself now stumped on how to play 2 wads at once. As an example, a wad file that requires a different texture wad. How do I get both wads, the map wad and the texture wad to load together?

Back when I played Doom in the 90's my old PC ran Win3.1 and using the command line was no problem. I downloaded Dosbox but when I type in the command line parameter I get a message telling me that ZDomm cant run in DOS. I need to use ZDoom and not regular Doom because the wads I want to run require it.

Color me stupid but I dont know what to do <scratches head>

Thanks for anyone that that help me out

1) while playing Doom/Doom2, the textures and flats all look fine, but the skies, where it shows looks horrible. I was wondering what's up with that? I assume this is a common occurance under these conditions?

Because Zdoom adds the ability to look up and down, which the original Doom engine did not support, it stretches the skies so that it doesn't tile when you look up. There's an option somewhere in the settings to disable stretching the skies, but I don't recommend enabling it unless you're also going to disable mouselook.

2) I'm using ZDoom to play various maps, I use the very convienient method of dragging the wad file I want to play onto the ZDoom icon on my desktop. Works fine. However, I find myself now stumped on how to play 2 wads at once. As an example, a wad file that requires a different texture wad. How do I get both wads, the map wad and the texture wad to load together?

Select both files (hold down the control key to select them both), then drag them to ZDoom. Voila!

Back when I played Doom in the 90's my old PC ran Win3.1 and using the command line was no problem. I downloaded Dosbox but when I type in the command line parameter I get a message telling me that ZDomm cant run in DOS. I need to use ZDoom and not regular Doom because the wads I want to run require it.

Use "Run..." in the Start menu to enter your command line parameters, just like you would at a dos prompt.

Hope this helps :)

2) I'd put both wads in a zip file and then drag it onto the exe. Or you could merge them together with XWE or something.

Deertag said:

Back when I played Doom in the 90's my old PC ran Win3.1 and using the command line was no problem. I downloaded Dosbox but when I type in the command line parameter I get a message telling me that ZDomm cant run in DOS. I need to use ZDoom and not regular Doom because the wads I want to run require it.

DOSBox is an emulator that emulates an old DOS machine. To get a Windows command line prompt like you describe, go to start->run and type "cmd.exe".

Thanks for the responses guys. I tried both suggestions, the Ctrl trick to highlight both files to drag and the run suggestion. Both worked proving an old dog (me) can learn new tricks. haha

Regarding my comment about doom skies tho, it seems to be just the original doom skies. I almost never use the look up option. They dont look stretched or distorted, they just look real bad like very large pixels and the colors are washed out.

When playing maps with an imported sky, the sky looks good. In some cases, the imported skies look fantastic. I remember the skies years ago looking just as good as the textures and flats so thats why I was wondering.

Anyway, thanks again for the help and suggestions

Deertag said:

Regarding my comment about doom skies tho, it seems to be just the original doom skies. I almost never use the look up option. They dont look stretched or distorted, they just look real bad like very large pixels and the colors are washed out.

When playing maps with an imported sky, the sky looks good. In some cases, the imported skies look fantastic. I remember the skies years ago looking just as good as the textures and flats so thats why I was wondering.

This still sounds like it's just the stretching that ZDoom does, except that you say they look washed out. Although, the original Doom skies are all pretty monochrome except for E2, if that's what you mean.

Depending on the PWADs you're playing, you might be looking at higher res skies or skyboxes, which would look better than the original skies as these are things only advanced ports can handle.

Perhaps you could post a screenshot.

Well, stretching an 128 pixel tall pic (the sky) over 600 (or more) pixels of vertical resolution can't look good no matter what. Plus, horizontal movement also has a sort of fish-eye distortion, which makes stuff look even more ugly. Especially single-flat (256*128) starry skies are just horrible with stretching, in both directions. 4-flat skies (1024*128) looks somewhat decent horizontally, but still terrible vertically.

The point is that something that looked (sort of) good on a 320*200 screen (back in the day) doesn't look that hot today.

If you disable stretching, that will introduce vertical (when looking up/down) AND some degree of horizontal tiling, if a sky is too short.

OpenGL port smooth things out a bit, but yeah, the skies are pretty much a thorn in the side of an otherwise great game (and most of its source ports).

If you don't plan on using freelook, then turn stretching off and it looks like it was intended to.

You guys were 100% correct. I turned off the sky stretching and the sky returned to the way it's supposed to look. When I look up I can see the line where the texture ends and it restarts the drawing sequence again, but thats no big deal. I rarely use up/down look except when I can't see the floor or someplace up high where I'm being sniper shotted at heh

All this raises a question about Doom/Doom2's original skies. If more modern skies look better because they are larger and can handle the stretch, and with people in the Doom community having done so many incredible things to and about Doom, then how come no one has redrawn the original skies to new larger sizes so they work with freelook. I'm guessing there is something about it that make's that option not so easy but it sounds like a good idea.

they did some pretty cool ones in the JDRP sky pack.

I extracted the first set (Doom2) and it is now the skybox for my map for GZDoom (I love the GLDEFS lump)

Deertag said:

All this raises a question about Doom/Doom2's original skies. If more modern skies look better because they are larger and can handle the stretch, and with people in the Doom community having done so many incredible things to and about Doom, then how come no one has redrawn the original skies to new larger sizes so they work with freelook. I'm guessing there is something about it that make's that option not so easy but it sounds like a good idea.

I already did. Well, extended, not redrew.

You could also make a shortcut for the zdoom.exe and edit the Properties.. The properties you want to add/edit the commandline stuff are in the "Shortcut->Target" box.