Doom In Build Engine

[Dexiaz]

2 hours ago, VGA said:

Can you do that in GZDoom without weird workarounds? I mean simple flat/sprite doors that swing open and close.

Yes, I can do it in GZDoom. And, actually, I did in my unreleased Penthause port from DN3D to UDMF.

 

You can use a lot of polyobj options.

[Graf Zahl]

Having had some 'fun' working on the Build engine, I think I can honestly say that the only thing it has going for it is the ability to move sectors.

And the major blocker preventing this from getting added to a Doom engine is Doom's square actors. They effectively prevent any kind of moving geometry that changes its orientation.

 

Aside from that there's maybe one other thing where GZDoom could be improved and that is the limitations of texture mapping on slopes. In technical terms this could be easily changed, the main challenge would be to make this info accessible in an editor. But with a hardware renderer you could just add a texture coordinate to each vertex and be as flexible as you like, but good luck using that in an editor. It may be worth doing if I could be assured that it can be exposed there. The current system with rotation matrices may be easy to use but is very limited.

 

As for the engine itself, Doom may be older but its structure is a lot cleaner, which is clearly evident in how far Doom source ports went compared to the deep hole in which the Build engine is stuck. Take the most advanced Doom mods and there isn't a chance in hell they'll ever be made to work on Build - you'd run into so many problems on every level that it's futile. The biggest problem are the low limits, but the algorithm the engine uses to traverse a map does not play well with how Doom maps are made and certainly does not play well with high detail.

 

So, I think you'd be really disappointed if you tried to recreate Doom in the Build engine. In the long run the Doom engine proved to be a lot more scalable because its coding was significantly cleaner and more structured and it didn't use hacks as an asset. Build is full of cheap shots that stalled its development after the source release - and the later developers never cleaned up house - on the contrary - if you look at the options that were added in particular by JFDuke, they only made things worse by employing more hacks or opening up the extent of existing hacks to the modding surface. It's also quite baffling how many features in the engine are named "hacks", clearly signifying that nobody really cared about making it a seamless experience.

 

There's also one other thing not to forget: "The Build engine" is merely the render and physics backend - it contains no game logic whatsoever. Comparing the 3 major games being made with it, i.e. Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior you'd see that the game code has nothing in common. The only similarities can be seen between Duke Nukem and its 3 offspring games Nam, WW2 GI and Redneck Rampage.

[Cherno]

7 hours ago, VGA said:

@Gez

 

Thanks for the info. I guess Build is still the best when it comes to deformation and destructibility. But what about simple swinging doors? Can you do that in GZDoom without weird workarounds? I mean simple flat/sprite doors that swing open and close. Also, can the severed head kicking be replicated in GZDoom? They get kicked differently, depending on the angle and the speed of the player. I think they also roll down slopes. Generally, Build has cool physics (sometimes glitchy)

 

I included kickable heads in my Left 4 Dead mod

 

 

Swinging sprite or sector doors are also not too hard. Depends on what you consider a weird workaround. Sprites would need to be scripted in zScript to simply rotate when activated, and sector doors can be done as polypobjects right in the map editor.

[Gez]

7 hours ago, VGA said:

But what about simple swinging doors? Can you do that in GZDoom without weird workarounds? I mean simple flat/sprite doors that swing open and close.

The solution for swinging doors in Doom is polyobjects. You could also set up flat sprites for that but I think pobjs are simpler to set up. A polyobject can perfectly well be a single two-sided line!

7 hours ago, VGA said:

Also, can the severed head kicking be replicated in GZDoom? They get kicked differently, depending on the angle and the speed of the player. I think they also roll down slopes.

Yes, you can. Keep in mind though that Doom has a grid-based square collision system (the collision box does not rotate with the object), which means you're not going to get very accurate bouncing physics, but it's possible nonetheless.

[Graf Zahl]

14 minutes ago, Gez said:

The solution for swinging doors in Doom is polyobjects. You could also set up flat sprites for that but I think pobjs are simpler to set up. A polyobject can perfectly well be a single two-sided line!

 

And in case someone declares polyobjects a hack, let's not forget that Build's way of doing this was even more gross. I cannot recall the details but it was all extremely non-intuitive. That's the real problem here: Build did a lot of things that were cool and quite groundbreaking in 1995, but the implementation left a lot to be desired, much of it was just implemented as a means to an end, not as something editing friendly and extensible.

 

[reflex17]

11 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

 I cannot recall the details but it was all extremely non-intuitive. 

 

 

 

The most unintuitive thing about Build was the editor itself, once you figured it out the effects were simple to create. A rotating door was a sector, a tag, and a sectoreffector sprite for the rotation point. The angle of the sectoreffector decided the angle the door would open at. The user could add additional sprites for a sound effect or to change the speed. There's also the advantage of your polyobjects being visible in the map where they are located, instead of being loaded in at runtime.

 

Blood and Shadow warrior added a lot of functionality to tags and variables, that's when things got pretty thick but at the same time, more customizable.

[Gokuma]

Blood Flesh Supply is on sale for $7 and Shadow Warrior Classic Redux is $2.50, through tomorrow I think.   Didn't look to see if Duke was on sale.

[Dexiaz]

13 hours ago, Gokuma said:

Blood Flesh Supply is on sale for $7 and Shadow Warrior Classic Redux is $2.50, through tomorrow I think.   Didn't look to see if Duke was on sale.

Erm, how is this related to this thread?

[seed]

21 minutes ago, Deⓧiaz said:

Erm, how is this related to this thread?

 

Also, as someone who just tried to play Duke 3D WT, you're better off NOT buying that dogshit port. You can't even disable VSync which causes unreal input lag, so much that it's nigh unplayable... Quite telling about the quality...

 

Worst Duke remaster ever.

[Gokuma]

It's relevant because there's various discussion of the Build engine games on this topic.  

 

And if you read you would have seen this on the first page:

 

VGA said:

Quote

 

Do not use the World Tour engine, use eduke32 with that stopgap mod for World Tour. And use the Polymer renderer for the cool lighting effects that World Tour has. So use the data files from World Tour.

 

And do not use the Fresh Supply engine, use its data files with BuildGDX. And yes, Blood is the best Build game for many people, even though Duke is more famous. :D

 

 

Searching for this recent topic, I found a few others.   NBlood may be the closest to original Blood, but some people like ZBlood though that one is the farthest.   Also Duke 20th is currently $4.  Blood Fresh Supply and Shadow Warrior Classic Redux have the CD audio sound tracks as OGG files.   And Shadow Warrior has the original manual scanned into a PDF file..

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Gokuma

[VGA]

BloodGDX is way closer to vanilla than NBlood. Based on the custom content I have been trying. Not fun to have broken/unfinishable maps on NBlood...

[Amuscaria]

On 10/13/2019 at 8:58 AM, Taurus Daggerknight said:

Graphically, I've seen far more impressive Doom mods in recent years than anything the Build Engine has going. At most, it would be a small novelty IMO, but really... the Doom community has gone far past Build at this point. 

 

In the 22 years I've been in the Doom Community, no mod or TC has ever come close to what Ion Maiden has to offer in terms of graphic fidelity. 

[jeroa]

1 hour ago, Amuscaria said:

 

In the 22 years I've been in the Doom Community, no mod or TC has ever come close to what Ion Maiden has to offer in terms of graphic fidelity. 

 

i am curious as to why that is? maybe because the team was doing it as a job?

[reflex17]

I think a huge part of it is just sheer talent and experience, not to say Doom modders don't have that, but I watched as the work of people improved in the Duke3d fan community for many years before the release of Ion Maiden. DavoX in particular was a top tier mapper for Duke3d, and I'm not at all surprised by the level of quality they were able to achieve.

[Dexiaz]

9 hours ago, Amuscaria said:

In the 22 years I've been in the Doom Community, no mod or TC has ever come close to what Ion Maiden has to offer in terms of graphic fidelity. 

 

Say this to everyone who worked with Blade of Agony, KDiZD and Stronghold.

[Graf Zahl]

9 hours ago, Amuscaria said:

 

In the 22 years I've been in the Doom Community, no mod or TC has ever come close to what Ion Maiden has to offer in terms of graphic fidelity. 

 

Well, if you call visual overload "graphic fidelity" I'd agree. I've never seen any game that goes this overboard with high contrast visuals - but that really tends to cloud the issue. It's absolutely no comparison to making something truly detailed but with a more reasonable color scheme.

 

On 11/1/2019 at 11:03 PM, VGA said:

BloodGDX is way closer to vanilla than NBlood. Based on the custom content I have been trying. Not fun to have broken/unfinishable maps on NBlood...

 

BloodGDX is the more mature of these engines, so it is hardly surprising that it got less bugs. Instead of complaining that you cannot finish a map in NBlood, how about helping out and pointing its devs to the problem maps so that they can fix it?

[Taurus Daggerknight]

10 hours ago, Amuscaria said:

 

In the 22 years I've been in the Doom Community, no mod or TC has ever come close to what Ion Maiden has to offer in terms of graphic fidelity. 

 

Brutal Doom and BD 64, Total Chaos, and the Dark Star wad, to name a few. 

[dr_st]

On 10/14/2019 at 2:49 PM, Graf Zahl said:

Having had some 'fun' working on the Build engine, I think I can honestly say that the only thing it has going for it is the ability to move sectors.

The one feature I love in the Build engine (which is likely unintentional outcome of its design) is that sectors's actual position is meaningless, only their relative position to each other. As a result, you can have two completely different sectors in the same physical coordinates. This has been used for neat tricks like in 'Tier Drops' (Duke3D E3L10) where the central room changes depending on the door you enter from, and, my favorite, 'Lunatic Fringe' (Duke3D E2L11) where there is a 720-degree circle around the main building.

 

On 10/14/2019 at 2:49 PM, Graf Zahl said:

As for the engine itself, Doom may be older but its structure is a lot cleaner, which is clearly evident in how far Doom source ports went compared to the deep hole in which the Build engine is stuck.

I wonder how much of it is due to the programming methodologies of John Carmack vs Ken Silverman, and how much is inherent to the choice of engine fundamentals.

[Amuscaria]

14 minutes ago, dr_st said:

where there is a 720-degree circle.

 

You can do this with GZDoom portals, I think, pretty easily.

 

[seed]

On 11/2/2019 at 12:03 AM, VGA said:

BloodGDX is way closer to vanilla than NBlood. Based on the custom content I have been trying. Not fun to have broken/unfinishable maps on NBlood...

 

That's simply because it has been out for longer than NBlood and had a chance to become more mature, while also implementing a number of features for modders. Given enough time, accuracy issues and bugs will be dealt with and there won't be any difference when it comes to this between the two anymore.

[Doomkid]

On 10/14/2019 at 11:37 PM, Gez said:

the collision box does not rotate with the object

Woah! Things I just learned about Doom.

 

13 hours ago, Amuscaria said:

In the 22 years I've been in the Doom Community, no mod or TC has ever come close to what Ion Maiden has to offer in terms of graphic fidelity. 

👀

I could accept “Ion Maiden narrowly edges out the best Doom mods” even though I’d personally disagree but.. never come close?  :o In the 19 years I’ve been a part of this community I can assure you I’ve seen ‘prettier’ maps in quite a few wads over the years - have you seen Refracted Reality? - and although I think the weapon sprites in Ion Maiden are probably among the best weapon sprites I’ve seen, they’re certainly within throwing distance of the offerings found in Complex Doom, Pirate Doom, Brutal Doom, not even mentioning things like Hunter’s Moon and the jillion other gun mods out there that have decent-to-great looking sprites.

 

I know it’s silly to get into a dick-measuring contest with this sort of thing, and I love me some good build engine action. I just can’t hear the (I’m guessing unintended) downplaying of so many Big, Beautiful Wads without kicking up a bit of a stink :)

[Doom64hunter]

On 10/9/2019 at 4:10 AM, Murdoch said:

Personally, I would likely not be too interested in this project were it to come to pass because Doom is about more than the levels, art, music and sound. It's about feel. And that is fundamentally dictated by the engine. How the player moves through the environment, how the very world itself is rendered, it all coalesces to create what we know as Doom. Were I to play a Doom themed Build engine game, it would to me likely feel more like Duke or Blood with a Doom skin on it, not like an actual Doom game. It might actually be good on it's own merits. But it will not be Doom.

 

I think this post hits the nail on the head. Arguing about which engine has better features, is coded more cleanly, has the better tools or projects entirely misses the point. Build could be lightyears ahead of the Doom engine in terms of features, and yet it would still not be a reasonable choice to try and update the game to run on it.

Because unless every feature present in Build that is also in the Doom engine is implemented in the exact same form and fashion, the result would simply not end up feeling like Doom. The same could be said about trying to do it the other way around, recreating Duke3D in GZDoom for example.

 

On 10/11/2019 at 11:11 PM, VGA said:

Do not use the World Tour engine, use eduke32 with that stopgap mod for World Tour. And use the Polymer renderer for the cool lighting effects that World Tour has. So use the data files from World Tour. 

 

And do not use the Fresh Supply engine, use its data files with BuildGDX. And yes, Blood is the best Build game for many people, even though Duke is more famous. :D

 

The stopgap does not fully recreate all the features found in World Tour. If you want to experience the expansion as it was designed to be experienced, you're going to have to play with their source port. And Polymer is no longer maintained -- possibly even inferior to the renderer present in the World Tour version.

 

Edit: Regarding the Ion Fury comment, it's especially silly to get into a dick-measuring contest about Ion Fury's graphical fidelity considering Cage has done artwork for both Doom and Build engine projects.

[VGA]

6 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

BloodGDX is the more mature of these engines, so it is hardly surprising that it got less bugs. Instead of complaining that you cannot finish a map in NBlood, how about helping out and pointing its devs to the problem maps so that they can fix it?

I reported the bugs I found to their discord and got responses from the devs. I will revisit NBlood after a stable version with reinstated movie support comes out, some custom content weirdly enough has vids :D

 

BloodGDX also makes it easier to load custom content.

[seed]

2 hours ago, Doom64hunter said:

The stopgap does not fully recreate all the features found in World Tour. If you want to experience the expansion as it was designed to be experienced, you're going to have to play with their source port. And Polymer is no longer maintained -- possibly even inferior to the renderer present in the World Tour version.

 

That is correct, because Gearbox could not be arsed to release the source to their port, unlike the folks who made Megaton for an easier integration, and last I checked not many were excited by the idea of reverse-engineering WT to implement the new features, hence why eduke32 still has only partial support for it, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon.

 

WT, as a port, is much inferior to Megaton and eduke32 anyway. I finally tried it recently and it's such garbage that it barely has any options, if you minimize the game, it switches out of fullscreen mode, to a lower resolution, and you have to manually change it back for some stupid reason, and VSync is forced which is a huge mistake. VSync is so poorly implemented it makes the game feel janky and especially unresponsive to input, input lag (mouse) is unreal for me, I had to quit playing because it was borderline unplayable. I would not be surprised that VSync was forced on because stuff would break in this new port otherwise. And speaking of input lag, I thought that was bad in other SDL-based ports, until I tried WT...

 

Worst Duke re-release ever. Period. Can't believe we're stuck with this shit... So, get the game, but do yourself a service and use eduke32 or RedNukem, this port ain't worth it. I knew it was bad so my expectations were basically nonexistent, but I certainly wasn't expecting this...

 

24 minutes ago, VGA said:

BloodGDX also makes it easier to load custom content.

 

I think the mod launcher is being ported to NBlood, or a variation of it.