New Article about Doom on my Blog

[Spowmtom]

This article is for the ones who want to start playing Doom but are clueless about what to do beyond launching the DosBOX version of Steam.

Enjoy!

 

[taufan99]

Hi! Fellow blogger here. Enjoyed reading this article of yours, and I must say your blog looks promising. Any plan on your next article(s)?

[Redneckerz]

9 hours ago, Spowmtom said:

This article is for the ones who want to start playing Doom but are clueless about what to do beyond launching the DosBOX version of Steam.

Enjoy!

 

A very elaborate entry! Does a great job introducing folks to the world of Doom.

 

However, i do have some points of contention:

• ''In 1999, the source code of Doom for Linux was released by ID software (the DOS build was never released because of licensing issues)'' - The GPL version was indeed. But Linux Doom source code was on December 23, 1997. Perhaps this could be added in to highlight the differences?
• You refer to ZDoom and Boom as mods, but also DeHackEd is counted as a mod. Neither of this is actually the case. ZDoom and Boom are source ports, DeHackEd is not a mod, but rather a tool/standard to directly modify (''hack'') the Doom executable by altering the internal codepointers of the game. It cannot expand upon them like DEHEXTRA, only modification of what's already there is possible. Often, this involves a copy of the Doom executable, called DoomHack.
• ''There are also other types of mods like Marine's Best Friend, but those are rare and not important right now.'' - Aside from it not being a mod :P, i have to disagree here. Whilst Boom expanded significantly upon the Vanilla engine, MBF's codepointers were highly influential aswell, and MBF introduced the helper dog mechanic. It also provided the basis for SMMU, WinMBF and consequently Woof. Several WAD's are listed as MBF-compatible rather than Boom-compatible, a popular example being Eviternity.
• Chocolate Doom obviously tries to mimic Vanilla Doom to a teeth, but it does support a few enhancements for QoL purposes, like built in DeHacked/merging support.
• PrBoom+ is currently not maintained anymore, the UMAPINFO work is the latest version (And supports the DEHEXTRA standard).
• You mention of GZDoom: ''It's badly optimized, I can't run it well on my low-end machines, even with its lite version, LZDoom.'' - This is subjective, not objective. Why is it badly optimized in your eyes? GZDoom requires a reasonably decent PC with OpenGL 3.3 support and prefers Nvidia hardware or, as second best, Intel.
• The same, but even more, goes for LZDoom. LZDoom targets lower end machines by default, so if it can't run well on your machine, i feel you should implore why that is. By comparison, my ancient 2010 barebones rig (Athlon X2, 3 GB DDR2, Geforce 6150 SE IGP) runs LZDoom perfectly fine.
• One thing i missed coverage from is Entryway's Doom-Plus executable hacks.

Hopefully this helps. I love to hear your response on this!

[Graf Zahl]

I see you are quite biased, seeing how quickly you brush off GZDoom and Zandronum in that post, only focussing on the negatives, which are mostly nitpicks - and you present them in a way that's clearly meant to dissuade people from using these ports without providing any help to ease the setup.

The only relevant thing you list is the lack of low end optimization, but that's actually deliberate - and let's be realistic here: That's only a small group of users who are affected, and you really need large maps to suffer from it.

 

If you really want to be helpful you should make

a) a neutrally worded list of a port's features. (completely missing for all mentioned ports)

b) an also neutrally worded list of potential problems a user may encounter. (suspiciously absent from the 'purer' ports, and also too broad and unspecific where present)

c) give a short opinion summary at the end.

d) avoid jargon. The article is full of terms a casual user will have problems understanding.

 

In any case, don't make your nitpicks stand out. That's not helpful and feels like you are trying to push your opinion upon others. Present the features and the issues and let your readers figure out what's important to them and what not. Also, try to give help where you think the issues you mention can be overcome.

 

Also, what about all the other ports? There's quite a bit more of variety out there than the short list you made.

 

 

21 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

GZDoom requires a reasonably decent PC with OpenGL 3.3 support and prefers Nvidia hardware or, as second best, Intel.

 

It's OpenGL that "prefers" NVidia. It's outside my control, unfortunately.

 

 

[Redneckerz]

14 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

It's OpenGL that "prefers" NVidia. It's outside my control, unfortunately.

Well you know by now where i stand regarding that.  :)

[Cacodemon345]

On 8/18/2020 at 3:35 PM, Graf Zahl said:

It's OpenGL that "prefers" NVidia. It's outside my control, unfortunately.

It's OpenGL on Windows that likes to prefer Nvidia. On Linux, OpenGL prefers everyone. :)