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RestlessRodent

ReMooD 0.8a "Chicken Noodle Soup" Released

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Two months after 0.7c, a new version of ReMooD has been released. This version has preliminary Heretic support; new and improved sound code with the ability to play PC speaker sounds; removed the resolution cap of 1280x1024 (you can use really high resolutions now); and to see what other changes there were, please look at the changelog inside of the ReadMe. Due to the new sound code, the old music code was removed; however, it was buggy, and it will be redone for the later version "French Onion Soup". Downloads are available at the download page on the ReMooD site.

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Hmmm I should try redownloading this for Linux. Last time I kept on getting "system does not support music" problems. Though regular sound effects worked.

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Sonikku7 said:

Last time I kept on getting "system does not support music" problems. Though regular sound effects worked.


Only the Windows version had music.

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Mouse controls seem to have "novert" hardcoded into them except when I do something silly like assigning YMOVE to the x-axis. Program quit on me repeatedly when using 1280x800 fullscreen mode.

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GreyGhost said:

Mouse controls seem to have "novert" hardcoded into them except when I do something silly like assigning YMOVE to the x-axis. Program quit on me repeatedly when using 1280x800 fullscreen mode.


For the mouse problem, this appears to be a bug with SDL on Windows (as it works on Linux). The code does handle vertical mouse movement but it might be in a way that doesn't work with the Windows SDL. As SDL is meant to be portable this is most likely a problem with SDL.

As for the resolution crashes, does it crash when you enter 1280x800 or does it crash while playing it? You could try setting the resolution either in game then quitting or via editing the config. After you tried that see if it crashes.

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I just gave it a brief try. One issue I notice is that bullet puffs appear when hitting monsters, when they normally shouldn't. Also, the extra blood globs are blue in Heretic mode.

I notice the splash sound used in Doom mode seems to be a rip from Heretic/Hexen. If you need a free-licensed splash, you might look into the one from Blasphemer.

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My experience with this version:

* Source code is a tarbomb. Hate.
* Every file is mode 755 for no reason.
* A confusing start-up with tons of options puked everywhere for no reason (see deathbringer's "New Game" experience). the mouse options alone had a billion options and I had to try them many times to figure out how to disable vertical movement.
* After dying, the skill level isn't preserved. I entered a level on Hurt Me Plenty, returned on I'm Too Young To Die.
* Weapons aren't automatically switched to upon picking them up.
* Weapons have way too much ammo by default. Feels like this port is some kid's "1337 hax" to make the game easy (oh wait......).
* Imps in the hidden MAP01 room aren't alerted when firing your pistol/chainsaw in the hallway, as it happens on vanilla doom.

Some of these probably have configuration options, but for the love of god, don't change the default game in major ways just because you can. Even ZDoom feels more like Doom out of the box.

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Oh god, what the hell is this?


A short list of things that turned me off immediately:


- Upon first start the game came up in a micro-window that was so small that its contents were barely readable.
- All Doom menu graphics have been replaced by generic small font menus (ugly and boring.)
- Slow as hell. Even in 640x480 it's more a slideshow than a playable game.
- Crashed after less than 5 minutes fooling around with it.


I'm sorry to say this but I really didn't ever imagine to see a worse source port than Legacy 1.4. This certainly is.

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GhostlyDeath said:

For the mouse problem, this appears to be a bug with SDL on Windows (as it works on Linux). The code does handle vertical mouse movement but it might be in a way that doesn't work with the Windows SDL. As SDL is meant to be portable this is most likely a problem with SDL.

I suspect it's a code issue since I'm having no such problem with other ports that use SDL, even tried a different version of SDL.dll without success.

As for the resolution crashes, does it crash when you enter 1280x800 or does it crash while playing it?

It's done both. Doesn't run for more than about 1 minute at that setting - lower resolutions seem to be more stable.

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Graf Zahl said:

- Slow as hell. Even in 640x480 it's more a slideshow than a playable game.


What are the specifications of your computer?

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GhostlyDeath said:

What are the specifications of your computer?



- Intel Core2 Quad 2.4 GHz
- NVidia 8600 graphics card
- 3GB RAM


It's a standard-issue off-the-shelf system I bought 18 months ago.

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Graf Zahl said:

- All Doom menu graphics have been replaced by generic small font menus (ugly and boring.)

I commend GhostlyDeath for making the bold and courageous decision to favour free software over the usual "steal a bunch of graphics from the IWAD and hope nobody says anything" approach.

edit: one odd thing, if I have a CD in the drive it starts to play it. I couldn't see an option to turn this off

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RjY said:

I commend GhostlyDeath for making the bold and courageous decision to favour free software over the usual "steal a bunch of graphics from the IWAD and hope nobody says anything" approach.



If he has to keep all the additional options...

Just look at ZDoom how to handle a menu *correctly* by moving all new options to pages that are ZDoom specific and leave the main menu alone. The main menu is the same as in the original engine and thus can faithfully reproduce all mod specific alterations. I think this is important and it's a shame that far too many source ports sacrifice it for some questionable convenience. ReMooD is just the worst in a large bunch by completely dumping such an important part of the game. The main menu is the first thing people will see of a game and if that doesn't pop visually a lot of appeal will be lost right on spot.

Plus, the Doom license allows modification of resources as long as they are used with the game the came from. So making different texts out of the font is definitely not a problem - unless of couse you see free software as an ideology.

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Graf Zahl said:

So making different texts out of the font is definitely not a problem - unless of couse you see free software as an ideology.

Unless of course you see software licenses as something that actually means something rather than text that should be ignored. The leeway allowed to use IWAD resources in PWADs certainly does not apply to source ports.

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Heh, but the resources are stored in Pwads. Not in the source port. :p

Though I must agree there's some ambiguity when it comes to source ports supporting other games than Doom.

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Graf Zahl said:
The main menu [in ZDoom] is the same as in the original engine and thus can faithfully reproduce all mod specific alterations. I think this is important

True, in PrBoom the main menu is unaltered but the Boom developers added some stuff to the Options submenu which then suffer the usual font-matching problem. I need to think of a way to leave the Options submenu unmodified but still leave an obvious way to access the Boom full-screen menus (which I know everybody hates, but that's another subject)

Plus, the Doom license allows modification of resources as long as they are used with the game the came from. So making different texts out of the font is definitely not a problem - unless of couse you see free software as an ideology.

Hmm, so what you're saying is, having IWAD-derived menu graphics in prboom.wad is fine provided an original IWAD is being used? If that's the case I don't like it because it leaves Freedoom out in the cold. Also, it's not DFSG-free, which, regardless of my personal philosophy, I need to care about anyway as PrBoom is in Debian.

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MikeRS said:

Unless of course you see software licenses as something that actually means something rather than text that should be ignored. The leeway allowed to use IWAD resources in PWADs certainly does not apply to source ports.



Source ports, like PWADs fall in the same category (i.e. add-ons for the game.) so I fail to see the problem - especially when the altered resources are merely used to integrate new content seamlessly into the existing things.

The main problem here, however is not one of supposedly illegal resources but of bad design. If one is so concerned about legality issues with the resources that a proper change cannot be done without destroying what is there such changes to the menu should not be done.

But in this case I doubt that legal issues were the driving force behind the change. From having a look at the code t seems more like someone preferred an easy solution compared to a proper one. ;)

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The ZDoom menu code works as desired, but it looks neither easy nor proper. :P

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There are practical reasons to be careful with the graphics that are used, beyond just following what the license says. For example, Linux distributions like Debian will not allow non-free material. The Debian version of PrBoom actually has a modified prboom.wad with all the extra menu graphics replaced by a version done in a "generic" font. Using free material, at least it's possible to ensure that everyone gets something that looks vaguely nice.

On a personal note I'd rather use free material because it's more honest. I know that there are probably a handful of users who use my port (GNU types) who care about having a computer that is only running free software. As such, it would be misleading for me to say my port is GNU GPL and then include a bunch of graphics that aren't GPL. Although I don't particularly care myself if the graphics *I'm* using aren't GPL, I care enough to make sure that the software I put out uses only free graphics.

This was the main reason that I changed the Chocolate Doom logo - the old one was based on the Doom imp graphic. That was also a problem because a couple of people wanted Chocolate Doom t-shirts, but t-shirt sites won't allow graphics based on copyrighted material.

By the way, I know that there are "hi-res" font packs for ports like Doomsday, that have what appear to be complete recreations (ie. from scratch) of the Doom fonts, in the same style but at a larger size. Perhaps it would be possible to find their authors and confirm their copyright status, and use those instead?

EDIT: There's a video that (briefly) shows the HiRes menu graphics here.

EDIT 2: The "user interface pack" that contains the fonts seems to be here, there are also some screenshots.

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I don't see much of a problem between making decent menus and free software... use the main menu as in the original game, and then use small fonts to generate most submenus. If OPTIONS has many submenus, for example, head each submenu by the OPTIONS graphic and a subtitle saying what section you're in, in a distinguishable color (gray usually works well in DOOM's aesthetics because it's already used for some fonts). Like this:

OPTIONS (large red font)
Video settings (small white font)

Option 1 (small red font)
Option 2 (small red font)
Option 3 (small red font)

It would be easy to rework the PrBoom menus, for example, dumping the non-free stuff with the method above... in the process making something that even looks better. Boom's highlighting method for menus, for one, is pretty lame... even giving the highlighted choices a translucent background ("border") would look better than that multi-colored junk. Simply put, the Boom guys when crazy with color translation and applied it all over the place in a clownish way.

fraggle said:
Perhaps it would be possible to find their authors and confirm their copyright status, and use those instead?

Regardless of what the authors may say, these are evidently derivative of the IWADs, as they simply take the originals rather faithfully and make them suitable for high resolutions... unless they look rather different from the originals, but that's not what I saw (ed: as shown in the video you linked).

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Gez said:

The ZDoom menu code works as desired, but it looks neither easy nor proper. :P



The code may not look proper but at least it's doing what should be expected. I'm sure it will get fixed eventually - but not at the price of compromising the menu's look.

fraggle said:

There are practical reasons to be careful with the graphics that are used, beyond just following what the license says. For example, Linux distributions like Debian will not allow non-free material. The Debian version of PrBoom actually has a modified prboom.wad with all the extra menu graphics replaced by a version done in a "generic" font. Using free material, at least it's possible to ensure that everyone gets something that looks vaguely nice.


Ok, some people may care about this - but if you ask me, Debian is taking things one step too far. This attitude is a bit extreme in my opinion.

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I'd rather see a quake3-style or cube-style high-definition truetype font menu interface and throw out the older ones altogether. I appreciate GZ's point about supporting menu graphic changes done by PWADs, but personally I don't care. When I used to play doom a lot I used launchers anyway and skipped the menus altogether.

(note I didn't say saurbraten because I think the 3d menus in that are not a great idea)

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myk said:

I don't see much of a problem between making decent menus and free software... use the main menu as in the original game, and then use small fonts to generate most submenus. If OPTIONS has many submenus, for example, head each submenu by the OPTIONS graphic and a subtitle saying what section you're in, in a distinguishable color (gray usually works well in DOOM's aesthetics because it's already used for some fonts). Like this:

OPTIONS (large red font)
Video settings (small white font)

Option 1 (small red font)
Option 2 (small red font)
Option 3 (small red font)


Indeed. That's precisely how I'd do it if I had to work under such constraints. And except for the large Doom font that has been added it's how ZDoom's menus work (not for legal reasons but because this approach seamlessly integrates with mods that change the fonts or menu resources.)

It would be easy to rework the PrBoom menus, for example, dumping the non-free stuff with the method above... in the process making something that even looks better. Boom's highlighting method for menus, for one, is pretty lame... even giving the highlighted choices a translucent background ("border") would look better than that multi-colored junk. Simply put, the Boom guys when crazy with color translation and applied it all over the place in a clownish way.


Most definitely. ;) I never liked these menus, either.

Regardless of what the authors may say, these are evidently derivative of the IWADs, as they simply take the originals rather faithfully and make them suitable for high resolutions... unless they look rather different from the originals, but that's not what I saw (ed: as shown in the video you linked).


Hires texture packs are by their very definition always a questionable affair. On the one hand you can't really base your work on the original but if you deviate too much you get also criticised. So let's better not use them at all... :D

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myk said:

Regardless of what the authors may say, these are evidently derivative of the IWADs, as they simply take the originals rather faithfully and make them suitable for high resolutions... unless they look rather different from the originals, but that's not what I saw (ed: as shown in the video you linked).

To clarify, the reason that I suggested them was that they're stylistically similar to the originals but not identical - they seem like a complete remake, and not just the original graphics that someone has "scaled up" and detailed.

There's a screenshot that should show what I mean.

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Derivation isn't merely a retouching of original materials (copy/paste and modification). Clearly intentional emulation (as in the screenshot, compared to id's menu graphics) is also derivative, only excepted by cases like parody, where you add another layer of creative meaning to the "imitative" work.

Jon said:
When I used to play doom a lot I used launchers anyway and skipped the menus altogether.

Then your opinion about them isn't very relevant (and maybe less so considering you don't even play the game anymore). Besides, it's an opinion that looks at the code and the license, putting these over other elements of the game, which is a whole that includes the look as well as many people who do use the menus.

One alternative that does take your proposal into account is for open source engines to include non-derivative new fonts, and for people to upload derivative fonts in a parallel fashion to idgames for free software ports to use. These could include high resolution and low resolution versions. The engines would be made ready so that this extra proprietary package can be easily added. People who are too lazy to download the derivative fonts package or too prudish to ever use any proprietary content could use the ones in the Stallmanish engine package, while others would get the derivative ones like they've done with the other billion derivative WADs they've downloaded.

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Graf Zahl said:

Ok, some people may care about this - but if you ask me, Debian is taking things one step too far. This attitude is a bit extreme in my opinion.

Or you're just not looking at it far enough. Aside from the obvious part of potentially being sued by id Software for illegally selling CDs/DVDs that contain Doom resources (if they hadn't replaced prboom.wad resources, that is), they have a social contract to uphold and they will not compromise.

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Yeah, but why do these projects have to be distributed along with the OS itself? The fact that they may be compromised due to legal issues makes the whole scenario unappealing to me and I'd prefer to get such things off places that offer uncompromised content.

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Graf Zahl said:

Yeah, but why do these projects have to be distributed along with the OS itself? The fact that they may be compromised due to legal issues makes the whole scenario unappealing to me and I'd prefer to get such things off places that offer uncompromised content.


Debian provides shit loads of packages that the user can use...

Also, i'm doing my best to make ReMooD DFSG Compatible since I do want it in their repositories.

Also, it would be better if this warring discussion were taken to it's own thread so we can all talk about how much you love or hate ReMooD.

EDIT: on the note of the primary menu (New Game, Quit, etc.), I made it use the small font and such because mods could break the menu's looks.

EDIT 2:

"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.

Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 25113 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine."

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