My experience with Risen3D

I always was impressed by Risen3d and Doomsday's launchers. I even do not understand how normal people use these ports. It's very hard just to start them both. They are not for people, but for creators.

See my latest try

risen3d.wmv (6 MB)

I concur. Snowberry's confusing design is legendary (in my brain).

I've managed to get shit to run with it through trial and error. But I never managed to understand how or why. I just click shit until something works.

EDIT: Nice video. :p

I never had any trouble using the Risen3D and Doomsday launchers, in fact those were the ports I first tried when I got back into Doom in ~2003 (IIRC). I find these launchers clumsy, but they always did what they're supposed to do without hiccups.

Of course, that could be because I am actually a normal person with no computer knowledge, and not a programmer with a desktop that looks like some NASA interface. Who knows, maybe these ports were designed to give other programmers trouble. ;)

Phml said:

I never had any trouble using the Risen3D and Doomsday launchers

As you can see on video - it's just impossible to start it for 10 minutes! :)

Kickstart and its successor Snowberry were and are extremely powerful launchers; you couldn't ask for much more in terms of features.

However I do agree that neither (though Snowberry a bit more) are that well designed for people who just want to "jump in and play".

Dday's option menu's are far better "designed"; there are the standard option menu's for the average user while there’s the control panel for the person that wants to tweak things in greater detail.

entryway said:

They are not for people, but for creators.

See my latest try

risen3d.wmv (6 MB)

ROFL!

I couldn't agree more. These hideous launchers are one of the reasons why I don't use these ports. Even a supposedly simple task like starting a PWAD becomes a major undertaking.

While Snowberry is at least barely usable I never managed to get through Risen3D's retarded piece of shit. It constantly throws stupid errors and just plain refuses to start the game.

And starting the engine without launcher is close to impossible.

Why the developers of these ports insist on these clumsy interfaces is something I'll never understand. All the decent ports can be started directly from a command line without any hassle. No such luck here.

Yeah I had problems with the launcher, too.

Did they fix the red flash yet?

edit: Yep, they fixed it. Yay!

I wanted to try new version, because it could be third port after gzdoom and glboom-plus which can support Hell Ground (according to change log), but without a luck :(

Wait a minute. Berserk pack lasting until the end of the level is a bug?

Doomsday and it's forks (there are a few of them) all can be easily started from a command line.

The general form looks like this.

doomsday -game jdoom -iwad /home/wads/iwads/doom2.wad
risen3d -iwad c:\wads\iwads\doom2.wad

etc etc

For Doomsday yes, it works (but only if I go to the main folder and start 'bin\doomsday'.) But Risen3D only throws out some stupid error messages. I have never been able to start any recent versions from the command line.

DuckReconMajor said:

Wait a minute. Berserk pack lasting until the end of the level is a bug?

In Doom the berserk pack lasts until the end of the map. However the red tint only last's for about 20 seconds.

This does confuse some people who think that either the tint should last the whole map or that the berserk should run out when the tint does. Hence you get people submitting either as a "bug" to Dday's tracker or ZDoom's bug forum etc. Fortunetely both have "rejected" icons to indicate such reports are not bugs.

Regarding Doomsday's changelog though; most of the time Deng team simply write the title that the bug report was submitted with (along with a link to the report), even if it doesn't always completely describe the actual bug that the report led to being fixed.

entryway said:

As you can see on video - it's just impossible to start it for 10 minutes! :)

What I see on this video is you're doing all kind of weird stuff I don't even understand (and some of it I'm pretty sure is pointless, such as typing "heh" or "i don't want models" rather than, you know, fixing the problem). You really shouldn't claim to talk for the common man as, being a programmer, your experience with any kind of program is going to be completely different than for an average user.

I'm not even defending the launchers ; as I said, I feel they are clunky. I much prefer the drag-and-drop stuff I can do with ZDoom-based ports and PrBoom+.

That doesn't change the fact that, as a dude with no computer knowledge whatsoever, I had no trouble getting the launchers to work. My guess is you have files set up differently than what is recommended, or you're trying to do something specific, honestly I don't know, all this stuff is mandarin to me.

What I clearly know and remember however is my first experience with PrBoom+. I launched the program and it gave me an error message box saying "IdentifyVersion : IWAD not found.". That made absolutely no sense to me at the time, and there wasn't even any text documentation relating to this with the program that I could find. Eventually, I looked it up on the Internet, but getting the program to fetch it for you is much more user friendly than this approach for computer novices. I still haven't figured how to use any other IWAD than Doom2 with PrBoom+, heh (mostly because I don't care enough to look it up, I'll give you that).

By now you're probably rolling your eyes and groaning "omg how can you be so dumb don't you know how to use a computer" and well, yeah, that's the point. I don't know how to use a computer. Normal people, as you allude to in your first post, aren't computer fluent and would rather have programs holding their hand, at least at first.

In the end, you don't have much room to complain about Risen3D and Doomsday being hard to use for normal people. If anything, most casual players tend to gravitate towards these ports, partly because of the graphics, partly because it's simply easier to use than the other alternatives for newbies.

Phml said:

What I see on this video is you're doing all kind of weird stuff I don't even understand (and some of it I'm pretty sure is pointless, such as typing "heh" or "i don't want models" rather than, you know, fixing the problem). You really shouldn't claim to talk for the common man as, being a programmer, your experience with any kind of program is going to be completely different than for an average user

Are you kidding? It just does not work. What specifically I did wrong on video? Install -> Add IWAD -> Add PWAD -> press start -> got errors about resolution and models -> does not work.

Phml said:

or "i don't want models" rather than, you know, fixing the problem

How? I tried during the rest of the video.

As already said in the very quote you quoted, I don't even understand what is going on in that video. To ask me to point out to you what is wrong with it only brings one answer to mind : are you kidding me ?

Phml said:

As already said in the very quote you quoted, I don't even understand what is going on in that video

heh, can't help then

The video shows some desperate attempts to get a stubborn program to do what it's supposed to but fails.

It perfectly mirrors my own experiences with that abomination of a launcher, i.e. it's unusable.

Vermil said:

Fortunetely both have "rejected" icons to indicate such reports are not bugs.

In this new Risen3D version, you have to enable "berzerk bug", else the effect goes away with the red tint.

Phml said:

honestly I don't know, all this stuff is mandarin to me.

In the end, you don't have much room to complain about Risen3D and Doomsday being hard to use for normal people.

Did you not see it throw a fit over some resolution problems? He tried to fix it like I would have, and to be honest, if I had that much trouble with it, I would have uninstalled the thing halfway through the video. I will admit it was a bit drawn out, I dont know if that's out of his frustration or a way of exaggeration, but that doesn't make the point any less valid.

Graf Zahl said:

For Doomsday yes, it works (but only if I go to the main folder and start 'bin\doomsday'.) But Risen3D only throws out some stupid error messages. I have never been able to start any recent versions from the command line.

I just tried to run Risen3d in wine. While the command line looks sound based on the source code, it insists it always has invalid window parameters.

The command line used was

wine c:\\Risen3D\\Bin\\Risen3D.exe -verbose -iwad z:\\home\\yagisan\\wads\\iwads\\doom2.wad

So, based on the fact that it didn't start, yes, you are correct - Risen3d doesn't start from a command line.

Did you not see it throw a fit over some resolution problems?

I'll confess I didn't bother watching more than two minutes since I already didn't understand what the hell was going on.

DuckReconMajor said:

In this new Risen3D version, you have to enable "berzerk bug", else the effect goes away with the red tint.

WTF?!?

Don't tell me he fixed a bug that isn't one...

Yep.

In v220-2 a doom bug that caused the extra punch power gained after picking up a berserk pack was never reset. Some pwads, however, relied on this bug.
For this reason the bug can be re-enabled in ESC/OPTIONS/GAMEPLAY.

Graf Zahl said:

Don't tell me he fixed a bug that isn't one...

I got to know, that the berserk pack lasts until the end of the map after few years of dooming :)

To be fair, the message about screen parameters seems to be coming from Risen3D itself, not the launcher. Why the messages are happening is another question as, as far as I can tell from the vid, the video mode being requested is consistent with the desktop settings.

My own attempts to get HG.WAD running were far less eventful.

http://www.zen64060.zen.co.uk/examples/r3d_hg.wmv

The white screen at the end is only because camstudio can't record the game. It was working perfectly (without models). Also, the resolution is crappy because I couldn't figure out how to tell MS Movie maker not to lower the resolution when saving.

DuckReconMajor said:

Yep.

Holy shit. This is unbelievable... :?

Someone needs to read the Doom manual.

Graf Zahl said:

Someone needs to read the Doom manual.

I always wondered whether it was a bug or not too but the manual is indeed quite clear:

Duration 1 level.

Looks to me like Risen3d doesn't like the 100mhz refresh rate on Entryway's monitor.

On getting a response like that from a program, I'd test to see if it worked with the most basic option - i.e. the plain Doom2 iwad. That would narrow down the problem.

And as for not being able to understand what is going on in the video... this looks like a case of not even trying. There's nothing really hard to understand, as long as you don't simply decide that it makes no sense to you. Like maths problems where the typical error of thought is "I don't know where to start". Once you actually do dive in, it all becomes quite straightforward. Isn't it obvious he's trying to use the R3D launcher to play a wad, and then getting error messages, and trying the most natural things to try to solve those errors, without success, and encountering some surprising obstacles?

Regarding R3D introducing a silly berserk bug... that's just one of those golden "facepalm" moments. And it makes one wonder what other nonsense has been added in due to a lack of basic Doom knowledge.

kristus said:

Looks to me like Risen3d doesn't like the 100mhz refresh rate on Entryway's monitor.

Seems likely. I notice that when he goes to the Graphics tab in the launcher, the little monitor picture has nothing written on it. Mine says 60Hz which is indeed the refresh rate of my monitor.

Grazza said:
Regarding R3D introducing a silly berserk bug... that's just one of those golden "facepalm" moments. And it makes one wonder what other nonsense has been added in due to a lack of basic Doom knowledge.

It's not impossible, but I doubt it's plain ignorance, but more so "programming license." If anything was amiss, it's the idea that such a change by default may go by without annoying a good number of users. That is, it's a lack of knowledge on what players expect or tolerate. I think I remember at least one other such change in Risen3D then devolved into options after a critique, though I don't recall what it was. To be fair, though, various other engines that have also deviated from vanilla behavior have in general already had more time and input to resolve similar changes through reverts or options. Cases like having jumping or weapon recoil enabled by default are not too different.