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Eurisko

The Unity Port Thread - PS/Xbox/Switch/IOS/Android

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On 9/6/2020 at 10:36 AM, Edward850 said:

Local means local. 4 players in an online connection is not local. 4 players over a LAN is not local either. So yes it does mean the "like N64" one. 

Since LAN literally means Local Area Network it's understandable that he was confused.

 

My friends and I literally always (correctly) referred to our LAN games as "local Dooming" as that is the most accurate way to describe what we were doing. In this case "local" is apparently referring to the machine itself and not the network, but "local means local" is a meaningless/unhelpful statement should anyone find themselves having similar questions or issues in future, not to mention it comes off as quite condescending. Just figured I should point that out even though it's obvious, in case there's any lingering confusion.

 

On the topic of multiplayer, since adding or revising netcode is out of the question for the time being, I was wondering if there is any sort of support for things like -dup or -extratics? Doubling the gameplay speed by halving the framerate helps immensely with high-ping connections, as does sending extra packets. Is this feasible or currently implemented in the Unity version?

 

I just created a Bethesda account yesterday and finally purchased Doom 2 (even though I of course already own it) just to get a feel for this new port and it's very nice - really pleased to see this is how newcomers to Classic Doom will first experience it. Definitely leaps and bounds above supplying DOOM.EXE without the absolutely crucial SETUP.EXE (!) or even withered old Doom95, as some storefronts did not all that long ago.

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4 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Since LAN literally means Local Area Network it's understandable that he was confused.

 

My friends and I literally always (correctly) referred to our LAN games as "local Dooming" as that is the most accurate way to describe what we were doing. In this case "local" is apparently referring to the machine itself and not the network, but "local means local" is a meaningless/unhelpful statement should anyone find themselves having similar questions or issues in future, not to mention it comes off as quite condescending. Just figured I should point that out even though it's obvious, in case there's any lingering confusion.

 

On the topic of multiplayer, since adding or revising netcode is out of the question for the time being, I was wondering if there is any sort of support for things like -dup or -extratics? Doubling the gameplay speed by halving the framerate helps immensely with high-ping connections, as does sending extra packets. Is this feasible or (or currently implemented) in the Unity version? I just created a Bethesda account yesterday and finally purchased Doom 2 (even though I of course already own it) just to get a feel for this new port and it's very nice - really pleased to see this is how newcomers to Classic Doom will first experience it.

 

Definitely leaps and bounds above supplying DOOM.EXE (without the absolutely crucial SETUP.EXE!) or even withered old Doom95, as some storefronts did not all that long ago.

Yeah, I agree about it being way better than Dosbox. Thought, you can simply grab the setup file from the shareware version of Doom and use it for both Doom 1 and Doom 2. That said, we cannot expect a complete newcomer to figure that out. So the Unity port is a godsend in this regard.

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The Arch-vile maze was easier than I expected. I still died a bunch of times, but it really wasn't that bad. I usually died to my own rockets rather than Arch fire. I also found a secret that helped me a bit. But that music, that music made me want to smash my TV. It was sooooooo irritating. Now, I'm almost half-way through. I'm on level 14. It's fun, and the maps are short! After this, I'm going to continue playing BTSX ep. 2. I'm pretty close to the end. There should be only like 20 more days until the next add-on (probably 21), so that's nice.

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For the hell of it. I decided to record a video of the best Dosbox setup possible. It is worth noting I use Virtual MIDI Synth to handle the music with a SC-55 soundfont.

 

All I did was increase the memory to 32. (I play other games with that setup.) Set the cycles to max. Copy the SETUP.EXE from the shareware version of Doom. Copied it in the Doom 1/2 folder. Run SETUP via Dosbox. Set my music to use Roland Sound Canvas. Then changed my controls to something more usable.

 

My point is. It's so easy to fix that version I wonder why it has been left in its current state.

 

 

Edited by Thermal Lance

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We absolutely can't ship the SC-55 samples. That's copyright infringement. Distributing recordings made from the hardware (or with the licensed VST) is fine, that's the point of buying the hardware.

 

Updating the DOSBox side of things at this point would destroy a lot of people's setups where they renamed their favorite source port to dosbox.exe so they can launch it from Steam. It's a bad idea to do that with Steam games, but there are a *lot* of people doing that, judging by the amount of people who didn't realize it was still there under a different launch option when we released the new ports.

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2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

On the topic of multiplayer, since adding or revising netcode is out of the question for the time being, I was wondering if there is any sort of support for things like -dup or -extratics? Doubling the gameplay speed by halving the framerate helps immensely with high-ping connections, as does sending extra packets. Is this feasible or currently implemented in the Unity version?

So the problem isn't really ping (nor do you really need -dup for ping given you can just increase the local tic buffer size in code). The issue is the nature of modern networking. With the prevalence of WiFi, especially on things like the Nintendo Switch where it's explicitly the default connection method, having an input-based protocol nowadays just really sucks when you introduce multiple players, simply because the connection quality can just dramatically change at the moments notice, and having your entire experience dictated by some random player just isn't going to set a good impression. Even Halo Master Chief Collection still does it for co-op and it's a real drag.

 

40 minutes ago, sponge said:

Updating the DOSBox side of things at this point would destroy a lot of people's setups where they renamed their favorite source port to dosbox.exe so they can launch it from Steam.

I wouldn't worry about this. While you would think those files would remain untouched as long as you never change them, Steam's updater doesn't work this way. It revalidates all files on an update, so even if you only update the Unity files it'll be reverting any changes they have made anyway, so it's pointless trying to maintain this.

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1 hour ago, sponge said:

We absolutely can't ship the SC-55 samples. That's copyright infringement. Distributing recordings made from the hardware (or with the licensed VST) is fine, that's the point of buying the hardware.

 

Updating the DOSBox side of things at this point would destroy a lot of people's setups where they renamed their favorite source port to dosbox.exe so they can launch it from Steam. It's a bad idea to do that with Steam games, but there are a *lot* of people doing that, judging by the amount of people who didn't realize it was still there under a different launch option when we released the new ports.

Thank you for the reply. I wasn't aware I actually needed to use my hardware. Kind of a bummer. Software was so convenient for recording. Thanks for letting me know the specifics. I'll reupload new stand-in video once old grumpy is wired up.

 

My only real complain with the dosbox release is the absence of a setup file plus a single setting in the config file. From my understanding, you are saying that adding that single file and the change would rewrite everything for everyone? Didn't know Steam worked that way. 

Edited by Thermal Lance

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15 hours ago, sponge said:

Updating the DOSBox side of things at this point would destroy a lot of people's setups where they renamed their favorite source port to dosbox.exe so they can launch it from Steam. It's a bad idea to do that with Steam games, but there are a *lot* of people doing that, judging by the amount of people who didn't realize it was still there under a different launch option when we released the new ports.

It's even worse seeing that it's not even necessary for them outright replace DOSBox's executable with a source port's *.exe, they could have done this method to have Steam launch a source port outside of the stock DOSBox files via command line, that way Steam can be fooled into using a source port and the DOSBox files don't have to be tampered with. I've done this method before up until the Unity re-release arrived and it worked well enough so I can play source ports and have Steam's gameplay tracking feature and overlay. It really goes to show how people are so enamored and spoiled by source ports like GZDoom, just like Gmanlives when he did his review of the Unity version very recently and made a lot of misinformation when comparing the Unity version with original DOS version basing his claims from GZDoom's features.

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17 hours ago, Edward850 said:

I wouldn't worry about this. While you would think those files would remain untouched as long as you never change them, Steam's updater doesn't work this way. It revalidates all files on an update, so even if you only update the Unity files it'll be reverting any changes they have made anyway, so it's pointless trying to maintain this.


There was a time where my Steam somehow corrupted itself and the updater would, on a seemingly periodic timer, re-verify my games that had been modded, undoing my setups, rendering them unplayable outside of how it was shipped. Thank fuck that was just a bizarre glitch and reinstalling Steam stopped it from doing that. That being said, modding old games on Steam is a pain in the ass and I don't enjoy doing it anymore. Local folders accessible via offline FTW.

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This is why GOG is better than Steam. Steam forces you to use the latest version to use any game. GOG lets you install any previous update, so terrible console ports like these aren't forced on players.

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1 hour ago, QuaketallicA said:

This is why GOG is better than Steam. Steam forces you to use the latest version to use any game. GOG lets you install any previous update, so terrible console ports like these aren't forced on players.

 

Speaking of terrible, so how about that Metallica over the past 30 years eh?

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1 hour ago, QuaketallicA said:

This is why GOG is better than Steam. Steam forces you to use the latest version to use any game. GOG lets you install any previous update, so terrible console ports like these aren't forced on players.

image.png.ea85859e6fe09306940036aece2a6fd4.png

image.png.cd554a3541c0a9d959a86365efb44868.png

 

GOG doesn't do anything special in that area Steam can't already do itself. And yes, GOG's previous update function is, just as it is with Steam, entirely on the whim of the developers.

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'terrible console port'

 

Literally the official best version of the game released in eons, with the developers going out of their way to fix all the muckups from previous versions going all the way back to the Xbox port, with the original wads intact and playable, and a perfect way for non-techsavvy people to re-experience the game without the awful mess that is Dosbox. If this is a 'terrible console port', what the hell is a GOOD port?

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3 hours ago, QuaketallicA said:

This is why GOG is better than Steam. Steam forces you to use the latest version to use any game. GOG lets you install any previous update, so terrible console ports like these aren't forced on players.

 

Except it doesn't, you can set your games to never update and they stay that way forever.

 

The fact that you're usually not able to roll back to older versions of a game tends to be more on the publisher/developer side of things than a Steam issue, if they don't allow access to them or have backups - see the examples Edward pointed out.

 

For instance, back when KOTOR 2 received a major update in 2015 they kept the older version alive for those preferring it, for whatever reason, and can still be accessed through a "beta" (more like legacy) branch.

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I'd like to do a study of the percentage of accounts made in 2020 that bitch about pointless things.
 

On 9/10/2020 at 10:25 PM, sponge said:

Updating the DOSBox side of things at this point would destroy a lot of people's setups where they renamed their favorite source port to dosbox.exe so they can launch it from Steam. It's a bad idea to do that with Steam games, but there are a *lot* of people doing that, judging by the amount of people who didn't realize it was still there under a different launch option when we released the new ports.

I'd argue that if players didn't see the pop-up clearly showing the DOSBox launch option, they probably shouldn't be modifying the files in their Steam directory to begin with. Personally, I think the benefits far outweigh the inconvenience. SETUP.EXE is absolutely crucial for a DOSBox setup.

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To extrapolate with a predictable question, "why don't devs usually do this on Steam then?", because it creates numerous support problems. 

 

Either users arbitrarily expect older builds to be supported as a separate branch (vanilla World Of Warcraft as a recent example to the surprise of the people who realised vanilla WoW has a lot of gameplay balance issues), users unknowingly present support issues from older builds that aren't relevant anymore thus tieing up limited resources, or it causes numerous problems in multiplayer support (we had an older build of Turok2 once that was crashing the moment it interacted with a newer server while Steam updates were still catching up, fun times).

 

It's just not practical to always keep them around. 

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2 hours ago, Devalaous said:

the awful mess that is Dosbox

I agree with the rest of your post, but this is going too far! DosBox is fantastic, it would be piss easy to supply Doom and DosBox with a couple batch files that make it simple to set up and play in a few clicks with good controls and performance..

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Yeah, but it really isnt all that nice and presentable for the 'everyday audience'. Ive neverliked dealing with it, and its a pain in the ass to do anything with it, because god forbid I have an easy to use system. It was an absolute nightmare just getting my X1 controller to work with Jazz Jackrabbit on it, seems like everything in it specifically works against me, and every one of my friends that isnt a tech nerd feels the same about this.

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Kids these days have no idea what it was to optimize your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT so as to get as close to 640 kb free memory as possible, creating boot menus so that you could have separate configurations for mouse, CD-ROM, mouse+CD-ROM, and neither. "Waaah, DOSBox is hard!" Well in my days you had to know your soundcard's port address, IRQ, and DMA if you wanted sound to work! None of this "plug and play" this or "USB" that you had to configure your hardware by using tweezers to move little jumpers into specific configurations with for all documentation a single sheet of paper written in Chinese and Portuguese only.

 

And you had to plug them uphill, in the snow, both ways! :p

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8 hours ago, QuaketallicA said:

This is why GOG is better than Steam. Steam forces you to use the latest version to use any game. GOG lets you install any previous update, so terrible console ports like these aren't forced on players.

really bold statement but you don't realize that it really depends on the devs and availability.

 

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2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I agree with the rest of your post, but this is going too far! DosBox is fantastic, it would be piss easy to supply Doom and DosBox with a couple batch files that make it simple to set up and play in a few clicks with good controls and performance..

Yup. Dosbox works fine.

 

In case anybody have doubts

 

 

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9 hours ago, QuaketallicA said:

This is why GOG is better than Steam. Steam forces you to use the latest version to use any game. GOG lets you install any previous update, so terrible console ports like these aren't forced on players.

Or they could have done like Nightdive did with System Shock 1. When they released the Source Port Update, which was free for owner of the game, they did it as a separate downloadable product on Steam. I can download one or the other. But, it's probably too late for that.

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Well I don't want to use the Unity port I don't seems pointless to me, I won't be using it they can shove it for all I care. I was tired and mistakenly I said bethesda instead of ID.

Edited by Avoozl

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On 9/10/2020 at 7:31 PM, LiT_gam3r said:

At the end of every level, You think it's the end, and then a bunch of demons appear

 

I had this happen to me on No End In Sight E2M7. Which was one of the most brutal maps I've ever played. 

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2 hours ago, Avoozl said:

Well bethesda can just shove it, I'm never using their Unity port.

not Bethesda. It's ID. That's also a crazy statement. They aren't shoving it. If they were, they would have deleted DOSbox.

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4 hours ago, Gez said:

Well in my days you had to know your soundcard's port address, IRQ, and DMA if you wanted sound to work!

 

Burnt into my head, 220, 7, 1 on my rigs back then. But just because sometimes games made problems if the soundcard used IRQ 5, So i had to reconfigure the LPT to use 5 instead of 7 in the BIOS.

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2 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

That'll show 'em!

 

As opposed to what, burning down their corporate offices? What other recourse does a consumer have exactly?

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