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Jannak

Does anyone play software mode anymore? (and Sprite Clipping)

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I use Software pretty much almost exclusively. Hardware rendering in GZDoom can look pretty good with the right settings, but in the end, I just prefer how Software looks with Doom.

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Software rendering for me, mostly. I usually opt for Eternity when playing non-ZDoom stuff, and though for GZD I have a keybind that flip-flops between OpenGL and Software, I tend to stick to the latter unless there's performance troubles or a map requires it.

 

Semi-on-topic: @Spectre01's screenshots are a fantastic example of how close you can make GZDoom's GL renderer look like the software mode nowadays -- all the important stuff (lighting, texture detail, etc.) is spot-on, though frankly it's a bit of a pain to find the right settings unless you know all the geek lingo. :P

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1 hour ago, P41R47 said:

Where i can find this maps @Spectre01?
They look outstanding!

Thanks! It's currently a work in progress and may be finished some time next year.

 

1 minute ago, Xaser said:

Semi-on-topic: @Spectre01's screenshots are a fantastic example of how close you can make GZDoom's GL renderer look like the software mode nowadays -- all the important stuff (lighting, texture detail, etc.) is spot-on, though frankly it's a bit of a pain to find the right settings unless you know all the geek lingo. :P

The main options for "Software in GL" for me are:

  • Sector light mode: Software
  • Banded SW light mode: On
  • Tonemap mode: Palette
  • Texture Filter mode: None, or (nearest mipmap)

Pretty sure everything else is GZDoom default video settings.

 

Edited by Spectre01

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2 hours ago, Gez said:

ZDoom's software renderer has no problem with slopes, unless you're specifically talking about sloped 3D floors.

Yea that's the thing.  There are some other things as well I thought, but I don't remember what they are.  Also, doesn't software mode still shear when looking up and down?

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Well i still use choco/crispy doom whenever i can, prboom+ with opengl rendering takes second priority and gzdoom for the stuff that needs it.

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I have grown to appreciate the diminishing lighting and palette making some maps more atmospheric and having colors pop out nicely, so I end up preferring the software renderer. That's not to say OpenGL can't do the same with some tweaks on the settings, but I get more out of the software renderer in my experience. These days, I only find myself using OpenGL if a map or mod requires it or if the software renderer is having framerate issues.

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1 hour ago, Baratus II said:

I always prefer software rendering unless, OpenGL is a requirement (like GZDoom modifications with 3D models for example).

Same

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I was always a fan of Hardware/GL rendering due to better performance and features like dynamic lights and brightmaps. However just recently after working on palette modifications, I actually started liking limited color SW rendering over HW rendering in places (especially in Heretic). Just look at the screenshots:

 

HW rendering:

Screenshot_Heretic_20191220_103755.png.e122f785316389a923848548a7031aef.png

 

 

SW rendering:

Screenshot_Heretic_20191220_103804.png.fc4dd172f1ae34d595ec3537a9f2178d.png

 

SW renderer just looks so much better here.

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I prefer software settings, the way I remember playing Doom in the early years. I also use low resolution for that extra blurriness, classic.

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2 hours ago, Spectre01 said:

@ReaperAA Why does that wall with the waves appear to have brightmaps in Software while looking dull in Hardware?

This thread's existence is the answer to that question. The colour map used for lighting in the 8bit renserer can produce stronger colours at a distance and at particular light levels due to rounding and algorithmic shortcuts (or even intentionally) than the linear and unrestricted lighting of 24bit colour rendering (it can just pick any colour, so darker areas can pick colours that ordinarily don't exist in the intended palette). They can produce two very different looks simply by the nature of what they are. 

Edited by Edward850

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GZDoom, 4k resolution, hardware rendering (possibly still OpenGL rather than Vulkan, though, I haven't checked), maximum AA with "vanilla" lighting mode. I've also got dynamic lights on with the automatically generated shadows and the Uncharted 2 shader enabled as it does nice stuff like darken corners. Bloom and bright maps are also a thing. I'm pretty sure I'm not using an explicit texture filtering, though, as the AA does a lot to smooth things out anyway. 

 

I only go back to software rendering to test compatibility in prboom+ or watch the very rare demo. I'd certainly never go back to play like that. Smooth, modern and shiny is where it's at. Also, fuck autoaim, mouselook for life!

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Software looks grittier, obscures details from afar in the best possible way, colourmaps make for cooler light/dark transitions and low resolution keeps the game feeling more cathartic. Plus the small previously-mentioned things like sprite clipping. OpenGL makes vanilla levels look sterile and often colours become blander. Playing at a high resolution only exposes how basic the maps and edges are and the movement always felt too artificially smooth to me, both from the player's perspective and when looking at the pixelated monsters smoothly travelling as though on a wire (though most of this hasn't bugged me until now lol). I don't think it's necessarily inferior though, if I'm playing a map specifically targeted towards GL port features and which uses increased detail to fill space that would be empty in the vanilla maps, I think it shines. It also gets points for having mouselook that doesn't warp the fabric of reality. And, y'know, literally everything that's advanced Doom mapping for like the past 15 years. And for letting us get rid of the niggling Vanilla bugs and curiosities.

Whoops, forgot this was about software V hardware and not Vanilla V sourceport. Anyway software wins for me hands down. Special mention to Crispy Doom for keeping the magic while polishing and stylizing it just enough that it feels new.

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I usually use software mode unless I'm playing something that's intended for GL. The crispness of software mode usually just looks better, and it supports things that GL can't replicate, like custom colormaps.

 

I think a big part of it is what was explained above by Edward850 and ReaperAA about the coloring. You often get a more vivid look in software as a result of its limitations, and even now it's probably still safe to say that the majority of maps created during the 26 years of Doom's existence have been designed with that more vivid look in mind.

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Keep in mind, as long as all of the textures/sprites/flats are restricted to the palette, there is technically nothing stopping there from being an OpenGL renderer that uses the COLORMAP. The COLORMAP could be fed into a fragment shader as a Sampler2D, and you would just need the light level and palette index as well. Hell, it would even be trivial to choose between smooth transitions between light levels and the "banded" look of the software renderer. Probably wouldn't jive well with a modern port like GZDoom though.

Edited by Wagi

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On 12/19/2019 at 7:16 PM, StoneMason said:

I use Software pretty much almost exclusively. Hardware rendering in GZDoom can look pretty good with the right settings, but in the end, I just prefer how Software looks with Doom.

Pretty much this. You can make Hardware rendering look damn good when you tweak the settings but i prefer software myself and i actually play using GZDoom.

 

Software mode w/ whatever compat mode is needed. I don't really use the True Color Software mode much though. I just don't really like it much.

 

The only downside that i see to using Software mode is that it can tend to be a little darker, or at least for me it is. My monitor is tipped back a little bit (on an angle) so that doesn't help either. I had a very hard time seeing in SIGIL when that was first released.

 

Other than that little issue i prefer to use it for playing Doom.

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I use software mode for iwads and classic wads in PrBoom-Plus.

Opengl mode for G/ZDoom wads in GZDoom.

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On 12/20/2019 at 1:12 AM, kaleb. said:

prboom+ for whatever reason doesnt, but glboom+ does..

 

E: Nvm.

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Mostly a crispy user these days so software renderer is what I use. I have grown to love software renderer and low resolution because doom with fancy hardware renderer effects and high resolution just looks strange to me. Doom levels start to feel too simple and empty in hd resolutions and lower resolutions help because the game world feels more abstract that way.

 

I also dislike unofficial visual enhancements like dynamic lights and brightmaps, so I don't really need to use hardware renderer. Hardware renderer does help with GZDoom performance but I rarely play anything anymore that requires that source port and just prefer to use simpler source port that works great on almost any hardware and also looks and feels closer to original doom.

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On 12/20/2019 at 4:17 AM, anotak said:

it's a lucky accident that we ended up with the game we got. are unintended elements a part of Doom? it gets awfully difficult to point to what is and isn't intended. what i like about the game isn't what id & friends wanted or expected me to like. during the video of "a visit to id software", romero runs into a HoM bug, and he's upset, but bobby prince is watching him play and is talking excitedly about how cool the HoM looks! to make good art, it must be larger than the creator can really conceive of. you have to let it form something else in the viewer's mind.

 

What an ironic example since effectively zero source ports preserve the original HOM effect and a Chocolate Doom pull request to re-add it has languished for years.

 

I think the choice between a "software renderer" or a "hardware renderer" is largely a false dichotomy. Doom draws graphics primarily by drawing vertical lines for walls and then flood-filling whatever is left over with floor texture. Effectively every newer FPS engine uses triangles being drawn by special hardware for drawing triangles. But this is not the only way to draw graphics using a hardware accelerator and I am positive a person could create a line-based renderer done entirely in GPU pixel shaders or whatever; conversely, GZDoom's softpoly option is a triangle-based renderer in software.

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i chose the hom example on purpose because of that. removing the old hom effect was also, not intentional.

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Count me in for using GZDoom in Software Mode when not running a mod that requires additional performance or aesthetic features only supported in Hardware.

 

If GZDoom received an "Indexed-mode" Hardware Renderer that used the colormap/palette as a shading guide of sorts, then I'd happily just use OpenGL/Vulkan always. Blending would be an issue due to how you'd have to read from the pixels/texels written so far, since blending is not a programmable part of the pipeline, but you can still get results from sampling palette/colormap at least with passable results.

 

NaSTY is an example of how it's possible (even though it's still not 100% perfect).

 

In terms of color, GZDoom's Software Truecolor Renderer is closer to what I'd expect from the Hardware Renderer. Instead, the Hardware Renderer washes all of the colors out because it still does weird things like desaturate the fade in an effort to lazily emulate the intent of Doom's original colormap, and considers "fog" to be a special case, mixed with the original lighting, rather than a new fade color other than default black, and employs strange settings like "treat fog as fullbright" as workarounds for it or what-have-you.

 

I wonder how many of those that use the Hardware Renderer change their settings get close to software's aesthetic. Without any more fine data like that, it's unfortunately easy to construe that the surveys were a veiled attempt at justifying work on GZDoom's Software Renderer as second-class, even at the height of the port's popularity and its effort to stay the "do everything" port that it seems to want to be. Regardless, people seem to want a color-accurate renderer (hell, I want one, too) with the performance benefits that GPU-based rendering provides. The current incarnation of the Hardware Renderer still keeps around a lot of approaches that are frankly obsolete, now.

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