Is Doomsday bloated?

Because Doomsday is slow and bloated. It needs to be optimized, then packaged into a presentable installer which installs everyting you want and downloads optional content like resource pack. And yeah I know you are working on it but still, I think that's the problem.

RightField said:

Because Doomsday is slow and bloated. It needs to be optimized...

I do love it when an application is referred to as bloated, since it really doesn't mean anything tangible. So what is "bloated" about Doomsday in comparison with any other modern port? As for slow all I can say is that personally, the only time I have noticed any significant slowdown was when playing the kind of maps that the engine really wasn't designed for. I'm talking the massively large in scale and large in size. As you noted, work is ongoing to squeeze more speed out but I don't think its anywhere near as bad as your statement would lead me to believe.

...packaged into a presentable installer which installs everyting you want and downloads optional content like resource pack. And yeah I know you are working on it but still, I think that's the problem.

What is wrong with the current installer? It looks and works fine for me.

Packaging in all the user created content with the engine itself is a pretty dumb idea to be honest and we'd be releasing updates daily.

Doomsday is not bloated. I don't understand why many people consider the various Jpacks part of the Doomsday engine itself.

They are as Tormentor's Ultimate Torment and Torture is to ZDoom; fan made mods, wads etc.

Nor is it slow by comparison. Dday naturally requires a faster computer than say ZDoom because it is so much more advanced graphically. If ZDoom had graphics like Doomsday, it would probably require the same sort of processor power as Doomsday.

Dday (and it's Snowberry launcher) is probably one of the most customizable Doom port out there. This is both a blessing and a curse.

On one hand it allows you to tweak your playing experience very finely. On the other hand the customization is so advanced, that it can alienate a user.

Don't get me wrong, I've used Doomsday alot but it still feels slow to when it starts or loads levels etc. Even without all the packs.

What I meant was an installer that could choose to download these packs if you wanted to, as well as automaticly getting the latest binary while still being the same installer.

Slow startup and map loading; this is something we (the developers) can agree with you on. The current stable release 1.8.6 has been found to be very sluggish during start up and map loading especially. This is something that has seen a lot of improvement in the 1.9.0 beta process and as of the upcoming beta6 you should notice a very significant decrease in load times despite the fact that we now doing even more pre-processing of map data and resources (for various reasons e.g., the new bias lighting model).

I don't agree that the engine installer should offer to download addons. Where would you draw the line? There are tens of thousands of mods/addons so that is impractical. We already have our own site on which to offer Doomsday-specific addons, which is surely enough? Granted that site is pretty basic atm but it serves it's purpose.

Installers that automatically download the latest version is something I personally dislike. If I download an installer for an application I expect it to install the version I actually downloaded. I can appreciate that others may like that in modern commercial games they will auto-upgrade themselves but we haven't got there yet, engine-architecturally speaking.

Split off the "Is Doomsday bloated?" discussion.

RightField said:

Doomsday is slow

Vavoom without dynlight/models/hireses/etc is 40x slower than glboom+ on map05 / 32 Inch Nails. Just 40x. Is it enough for saying 'it is slow'? So I think DoomsDay must be faster, but it is not possible to test, because DoomsDay can't load it (32767+ internal glsegs I think, because number of sidedefs is 'just' 30k < 32767)

RightField said:

Don't get me wrong, I've used Doomsday alot but it still feels slow to when it starts or loads levels etc. Even without all the packs.

What I meant was an installer that could choose to download these packs if you wanted to, as well as automaticly getting the latest binary while still being the same installer.

Blame Microsoft for that, that have crappy installers. If you want to be albe to choose what you want to download form doosmday, when you install it, use GNU/linux. they have great package managers.

entryway said:

Vavoom without dynlight/models/hireses/etc is 40x slower than glboom+ on map05 / 32 Inch Nails. Just 40x. Is it enough for saying 'it is slow'? So I think DoomsDay must be faster, but it is not possible to test, because DoomsDay can't load it (32767+ sidedefs)

Deng svn might be able to load it

KuriKai said:

use GNU/linux

From what I hear the next version beta of Dday should be able to load maps like Dues Vault.

Vermil said:

From what I hear the next version beta of Dday should be able to load maps like Dues Vault.

I think you mean Deus Vult map05, because map01-map04 can be loaded even with doom2-plus

KuriKai said:

Blame Microsoft for that, that have crappy installers. If you want to be albe to choose what you want to download form doosmday, when you install it, use GNU/linux. they have great package managers.

That was really a very, very helpful contribution. What people like you tend to forget is that those great Linux tools are not really designed for 'normal' people. Besides, who would be crazy enough to change the OS just for an installer?

KuriKai said:

entryway said:

Vavoom without dynlight/models/hireses/etc is 40x slower than glboom+ on map05 / 32 Inch Nails. Just 40x. Is it enough for saying 'it is slow'? So I think DoomsDay must be faster, but it is not possible to test, because DoomsDay can't load it (32767+ sidedefs)

Deng svn might be able to load it

It certainly can:
http://www.dengine.net/testing/32innail-001.png
http://www.dengine.net/testing/32innail-002.png
http://www.dengine.net/testing/32innail-003.png
http://www.dengine.net/testing/32innail-004.png

Do bear in mind that those screenshots were taken using a debug build of my (currently private) highly experimental new renderer. So whether the shown fps is indicative of typical end-user experience once the new renderer is merged to trunk for beta6 is unknown at this point.

Also note that I was using fakeradio, dynamic lighting, halos, particle effects and detail textures for the above shots.

i'll have to run it on my 486 to find out. back in 2003 doomsday was playable on pentium 100mhz machines near 30fps, doom with flares can't be that taxing.

That is if it even still runs on a 486 which I sincerely doubt. Nor do I particularly care if it doesn't. Back in 2003 Doomsday was indeed "just" "doom with flares" but a lot has changed since then.

EDIT: Wait, you mean you were still using a 486 in 2003? Man...

486s make great web, mail, and DNS servers. :)

Graf Zahl said:

That was really a very, very helpful contribution. What people like you tend to forget is that those great Linux tools are not really designed for 'normal' people. Besides, who would be crazy enough to change the OS just for an installer?

The 90s called, they want their FUD back.

Grazza said:

Split off the "Is Doomsday bloated?" discussion.

it's not bloated, it runs at decent speed imo. certain large maps get equally slow under other ports. for example i'm stuck with an amd 1400 yet and i stopped playing UTNT3 or cheogsh.wad because these ran annoyingly slow. jdoom is just more complicated to use with custom stuff.

I don't really like Doomsday's setup personally. There isn't really anything wrong with it, so to speak, but it takes more time to setup than I'd like.

It is fairly user friendly as far as setting it up and getting your iwads in the right place though.

Torr Samaho said:

it's not bloated, it runs at decent speed imo. certain large maps get equally slow under other ports. for example i'm stuck with an amd 1400 yet and i stopped playing UTNT3 or cheogsh.wad because these ran annoyingly slow. jdoom is just more complicated to use with custom stuff.

Bigger, more complex maps, run faster on GZDoom and ZDoom for me than Doomsday.

I have an AMD 64 X2 4200+ with an 8800GT, for the record.

Torr Samaho said:

jdoom is just more complicated to use with custom stuff.

To an extent, I must agree with you there, although we now have Snowberry, which makes actually managing the various mods and addons easy.

There are still quite a few usability issues in Doomsday itself when used to play more complex PWADs with custom resources et al. I'm sure its obvious to everyone that historically, this hasn't really been that high on the priority list as skyjake's main interest is in embellishing the original games with enhanced visuals and audio. When I joined the project (just after version 1.8.6) it was precisely due to this. Basically I wanted both the enhanced visuals of Doomsday and the extendibility and PWAD support of ports like ZDoom.

There are times when Doomsday's default effects will interfere with existing mods and support for the various DOOM renderer tricks has been somewhat lacking. Resolving these issues and extending the features inherent within the engine into the hands of mod authors, is my primary focus.

Through the course of the 1.9.x series I hope that users will notice improvement on those fronts.