Some things about GZDoom were better before

Appreciation for updates and whatnot aside, some things about the newest version of GZDoom caught my eye that were rather disappointing to see. I took some screenshots to help point them out.

Here is a problem with the lighting (on the ledge of the sidewalk); for some reason it appears different, even though the light value is the same for all linedefs:



Another lighting problem (the linedefs for the car's doors are slightly angled, while the rest are straight lines):



Here it is much more evident (light value is the same on the sector containing the 3 marked linedefs):



Another problem I've noticed, is with slopes. What used to be clean-cut slopes, now have gaps. Perhaps altering the sector's dimensions will rectify this, but I thought it worked fine, and I already designed everything according to the previous slope-behavior.




What are your thoughts?

The lighting is standard Doom behavior; lines that are straight vertical or horizontal on the grid will be lit either 16 units brighter or darker than the sector light level. It was done to increase contrast around corners. In GZDoom, you can disable this globally in one of the video menus (I can't remember whether the option in question is "even lighting" to be turned on, or "fake contrast" to be turned off. One of those exists, the other one only exists in my head :P )

You can also force it off on a per-map basis, by specifying "evenlighting" in the map definition of your mapinfo lump.

esselfortium said:

The lighting is standard Doom behavior; lines that are straight vertical or horizontal on the grid will be lit either 16 units brighter or darker than the sector light level. It was done to increase contrast around corners.

Ah, correct. And certainly a fine feature. But I think it worked much better in the previous versions of GZDoom. The car suffers the most from this change and it actually sticks out, while it looked perfectly natural before.

But I'm going to check the options menu, thanks for the tip. I wonder if it will look okay when it's completely disabled.

esselfortium said:

The lighting is standard Doom behavior; lines that are straight vertical or horizontal on the grid will be lit either 16 units brighter or darker than the sector light level.

I wonder if mappers ever exploited this detail, by placing light sources to fit with Doom's horizontal/vertical difference.

esselfortium said:

(I can't remember whether the option in question is "even lighting" to be turned on, or "fake contrast" to be turned off. One of those exists, the other one only exists in my head :P )

As of ZDoom 2.5.0+/GZDoom 1.5.0+, the option in the menu is this one:
Options -> display options -> Use fake contrast. You have three settings: off (aka even lighting), on (aka original Doom behavior) and smooth (my personal favorite).

In earlier versions, even lighting and smooth lighting used to be different options so it was a bit confusing.

printz said:

I wonder if mappers ever exploited this detail, by placing light sources to fit with Doom's horizontal/vertical difference.

That wouldn't really be doable without having bizarrely lopsided, uneven placement of lights. And what would the benefits be? The equivalent of single-sector lighting doesn't really seem worth the trouble when you could just draw an extra few lines for a better effect. :P

gemini09 said:

stuff

Question: What *was* the version you used before?

About the slopes, can you give me a specific map and set of coordinates where such a difference can be spotted? Screenshots are of no help.

Thanks for the info, fellas. Fake-contrast is now off! :)

Graf Zahl said:

Question: What *was* the version you used before?

About the slopes, can you give me a specific map and set of coordinates where such a difference can be spotted? Screenshots are of no help.

1.4.03.

I can send you a PM, after I double-check with my previous version first.

I have one small complaint about GZDoom though there may be some good reason for it or another way to do it that I'm completely missing.

When I open the menu to change the brightness / contrast / gamma etc the screen seems to change color to a sort of brighter yellow.
So I have to return to the game to see the actual changes.

Is there an option or cvar to disable this effect?

4mer said:

Is there an option or cvar to disable this effect?

Yes. dimamount and dimcolor control the effect. A dimamount of 0 disables it entirely.

Great, thanks.

printz said:

I wonder if mappers ever exploited this detail, by placing light sources to fit with Doom's horizontal/vertical difference.

I've been using a lot of varying angles in my maps lately, this room which is basically a rectangle shape tilted 45 degrees on the grid use fake contrast to make the bumps on the low ceiling look a little more three dimensional. It's not great but it's the best usage of it i could come up with.