Gzdoom user looking for a different sourceport. Caveats inside.

[Sethlab 79461813]

Hey guys,

I'm having a few issues selecting the right sourceport for me. I've been using Gzdoom for about 10 years and I'm really comfortable and familiar with its features and limitations. As I'm starting to play more demanding wads, I'm finding Gzdoom's performance taking a serious hit. The last few maps of Struggle: Antaresian Legacy and a fair amount of Sunlust gave my computer some serious trouble and that's with a reasonably beefy rig. Obviously, I'm seeing a lot of you all talking about using prboom+ and dsda doom and whatnot being better for these more insane maps. I played most of my HMP playthrough of Sunlust on prboom+ and I....struggled, to put it lightly. Later, I booted it up in Gzdoom without thinking and was like, "holy shit, why is this so much easier? Why can I aim and move so much more presicely?" After investigating a few settings, what I actually discovered was that the aiming in prboom+ was so much more sensitive that if I picked up my mouse to reposition, it would move my aim (in game) even as the laser of my mouse was only touching a half inch of air, if that makes sense. I tried to replicate the problem in Gzdoom and I can't. The aiming is so much smoother and more precise in gzdoom and prboom+ was extremely jittery and overtly sensitive. The best way I can describe it is it was almost like my mouse was picking up such small imperfections like dust or fabric on my mouse pad that would throw my aim off like 20 degrees at a time. I play with really high DPI on a small mousepad and before you shame my high school computer lab mousepad, I think I do pretty well with it. My mouse is also a Logitech G502, my favorite I've ever used. Never had issues in any other FPS from any time period. It's prboom+ for some reason. 

My other strange question is that I'm seeing people post screenshots or videos where their statusbar fits the whole screen without the normal green brick texture. I play Gzdoom like this, where I stretch the hud to fit for a more clean and classic aesthetic:

 

however, in the DWmegawad playthrough thread for uprising, I was seeing screenshots where their statusbars were stretching to fill where the green bricks would normally be, without blowing up the text as huge as I have to. Basically, I've seen statusbars that continue being red where my bar has the green bricks. Is that a mod or something?

 

Any help would be appreciated!

[omx32x]

whats your monitor refreash rate?

 

60hz with vsync makes the game feel like it has input delay due to the engine running at 35 fps

 

on my experience boom based ports can handle the 60fps vsync better then zdoom based ones

 

if thats the case on your machine, try disabling vsync and see if it makes a difference

[Sethlab 79461813]

my max refresh I believe is 164(?)hz and I don't use vsync. It's hard disabled in the nvidia control panel. 

are you saying I should be running the game at 60fps or 35fps in prboom+ ? 

The aiming/control issues I'm having are not in gzdoom, regardless of framerate. Sorry if my post was confusing. I went back and re-read it and i'm not sure I made the most sense.

[omx32x]

1 minute ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

my max refresh I believe is 164(?)hz and I don't use vsync. It's hard disabled in the nvidia control panel. 

are you saying I should be running the game at 60fps or 35fps in prboom+ ? 

The aiming/control issues I'm having are not in gzdoom, regardless of framerate. Sorry if my post was confusing. I went back and re-read it and i'm not sure I made the most sense.

oh i miss read your post my bad

 

with this refresh rate you shouldint be having any problems with vsync

[Sethlab 79461813]

yeah it's very strange that prboom+ would be like the only program my mouse would freak out with. 

Is it possible I need to cap the prboom+ framerate at 35 or something? 

[omx32x]

1 minute ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

yeah it's very strange that prboom+ would be like the only program my mouse would freak out with. 

Is it possible I need to cap the prboom+ framerate at 35 or something? 

you can try it however i dont think that will solve the problem entirely

 

another thing that might help is disabling mouse walking as prboom leaves it enabled by default if im not mistaken

 

i have heard of high dpi mouse creating problems in some games before so if that doesnt work, lowering the dpi might do the trick

[Dweller Dark]

When you lift the mouse to reposition it, does it translate to you turning left or right in-game? Or is there forward movement as well?

[Sethlab 79461813]

only left/right. I did disable mouse movement right away as that was an obvious no-go within seconds lmao. 

[Dweller Dark]

5 minutes ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

only left/right. I did disable mouse movement right away as that was an obvious no-go within seconds lmao. 

 

I'm not sure on how to correct the left/right movement, but I did manage to replicate it with the sourceports I have (DSDA-Doom, GZDoom, and Woof) and my G502 Hero. For me, the movement happens briefly when I lift the mouse or set it down, no input when it's in the air. The main difference on my side is that I have 59hz, Vsync, and my DPI is around 2200 (using Logitech Gaming Software). 

[Sethlab 79461813]

okay so that's a bit closer to what I'm experiencing. I think that's kind of what I was trying to articulate. It seems like when I lift up and put down the mouse that there is a left to right movement that is somewhere between 10 to 20 degrees in either direction. It does also happen if I hover the mouse over the pad (which is something you'd never do) but again, I don't really have that problem in Gzdoom. Peculiar.

My DPI is honestly around 3200 if I remember right. I didn't reinstall that obnoxious logitech software when I reinstalled windows recently so the profile on it is just the one saved. All I can recall is my friends all recoiling in disgust when I told them how high it was :P

[ZeroTheEro]

1 hour ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

however, in the DWmegawad playthrough thread for uprising, I was seeing screenshots where their statusbars were stretching to fill where the green bricks would normally be, without blowing up the text as huge as I have to. Basically, I've seen statusbars that continue being red where my bar has the green bricks. Is that a mod or something?

Widescreen assets.

 

 

[Redneckerz]

What is a beefy rig in your eyes?

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

3 hours ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

Basically, I've seen statusbars that continue being red where my bar has the green bricks. Is that a mod or something?

 

Any help would be appreciated!

Read wrong

 

What I did to achieve that look was setting the resolution to 1280x720 and in scaling options I set status bar to fully scaled (GZDoom)

[Sethlab 79461813]

1 hour ago, Redneckerz said:

What is a beefy rig in your eyes?

I'm not a super technical guy by any means so I didn't really feel the need to include it. Additionally, I don't really like the gear circlejerk with pc gamers. It's kind of like when you watch a guitar video and in the video is text overlaid saying "SIGNAL CHAIN" outlining all of the expensive gear they use. It feels like a thinly veiled humblebrag. So I don't do it. Since it's a technical thread and I'm asking for technical advice, I can provide those details. I can say that I play quite a few AAA games on med-high settings without any issue and have never encountered slowdown until 2 recent wad playthroughs. When testing this in Prboom+ my framerate was perfect. 
 

i.e. I'm looking for solutions so I can have the good feeling of GZDoom with another sourceport. I didn't realize I'd have to come in here and defend myself but your italics make me think you REALLY want it so

 

EDIT: I said "beefy rig" in the sense that I know what it's capable of and I feel I've reached the limit of what GZDoom will allow.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz   3.60 GHz
16 gigs ram
GTX 1660 super
1440p at 164hz

 

37 minutes ago, xX_Lol6_Xx said:

Read wrong

 

What I did to achieve that look was setting the resolution to 1280x720 and in scaling options I set status bar to fully scaled (GZDoom)

yeah, that's what I've been doing. If you see my first pic, I'm achieving those results with scaling as well.

[Bauul]

3 hours ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

I played most of my HMP playthrough of Sunlust on prboom+ and I....struggled, to put it lightly. Later, I booted it up in Gzdoom without thinking and was like, "holy shit, why is this so much easier? Why can I aim and move so much more presicely?"

 

So PRBoom+'s mouse movement, at least for a long time, was notably different to GZDoom's.  I was in the exact same boat: GZDoom felt natural to play but PRBoom+ felt... off somehow.  I really struggled with it.  I don't remember the details, but I read somewhere that the mouse input code was different.  But AFAIK, DSDA-Doom adjusted the mouse input to more closely reflect GZDoom.  I personally find DSDA-Doom easier to control for example.  So perhaps that might be a good option.

[Sethlab 79461813]

That sounds....fantastic, actually. Are there any other main bullet points for dsda doom? 

[Bauul]

5 minutes ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

That sounds....fantastic, actually. Are there any other main bullet points for dsda doom? 

 

Basically it's a spin-off of PRBoom+ with a bunch of QOL improvements originally designed for speed-running (for example it has a "rewind time" feature to let you reattempt a situation without reloading).  But in practice it turned out to be a really nice source port for general use too, and is pretty popular.  It's fully up-to-date with various new features like MBF21, UMapinfo etc., and supports anything MBF21-compatibility and down.  The Doomwiki has a good overview of it here.

[Dweller Dark]

Speaking of DSDA-Doom's rewind feature, are there any good guides on how to use it efficiently? 

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

i.e. I'm looking for solutions so I can have the good feeling of GZDoom with another sourceport. I didn't realize I'd have to come in here and defend myself but your italics make me think you REALLY want it so

No, not really, and im sorry it comes across as such. But a beefy rig can mean anything. Though in general, the opposite happens here - People wanting to run GZ on hardware that is just too underpowered.

 

Being your hardware being adequate, when you do get slowdown, this is the part where GZDoom settings come in. Since GZDoom has a ton of them, some of these can drain even modern hardware. Part of this is traceable to Doom's very renderer nature - Highly detailed maps with a lot of dynamic lights and perhaps even physically based materials tank GZ because well.. Doom underpinings.

 

[Sethlab 79461813]

4 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

No, not really, and im sorry it comes across as such. But a beefy rig can mean anything. Though in general, the opposite happens here - People wanting to run GZ on hardware that is just too underpowered.

 

Being your hardware being adequate, when you do get slowdown, this is the part where GZDoom settings come in. Since GZDoom has a ton of them, some of these can drain even modern hardware. Part of this is traceable to Doom's very renderer nature - Highly detailed maps with a lot of dynamic lights and perhaps even physically based materials tank GZ because well.. Doom underpinings.

 

 

Oh yeah. I'm fully aware that GZDoom has such shortcomings with more intense wads. I'm just wondering since the control is so tight, am I just forced to deal with slowdown, or do I deal with subpar controls? I would like to use a more robust source port if I can. Not at the expense of my control over the game, however.

 

Sorry if I was a little snarky. I guess I am so used to gear gatekeepers in the guitar community that my mind instantly went there. I've left some pretty toxic forums before. 

[Redneckerz]

30 minutes ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

 

Oh yeah. I'm fully aware that GZDoom has such shortcomings with more intense wads. I'm just wondering since the control is so tight, am I just forced to deal with slowdown, or do I deal with subpar controls? I would like to use a more robust source port if I can. Not at the expense of my control over the game, however.

 

Sorry if I was a little snarky. I guess I am so used to gear gatekeepers in the guitar community that my mind instantly went there. I've left some pretty toxic forums before. 

The slowdown is inevitable with high detail wads and if you keep post-processing on. In that regard, the variety of options in GZ make it more than robust and you will be hard pressed for something similar.

 

DSDA however does do OpenGL rendering, but it won't look just as nice. It can take on the more intense maps though.

[dpJudas]

Changing the post-processing settings doesn't affect high detail wad performance. That part of the pipeline is pretty constant. The slowdowns in more complex maps is due to how the scene itself is rendered.

[Sethlab 79461813]

I can gain a couple of frames by changing from OpenGL to software in GZDoom but yeah, the problem persists. I like all of the little graphical touches but they aren't necessary per se. I'd rather have smooth frames on maps where I can't afford frame drops lmao

[Sethlab 79461813]

And to be clear, the only real effects I use from GZDoom are rocket trails and wall decals. All post processing is off. I can't stand most of that stuff, in any game. 

[Sethlab 79461813]

6 hours ago, ZeroTheEro said:

Widescreen assets.

 

 

Reading through the thread, I can kind of tell that it's just available for whatever wads people want to make them available for. How exactly do I use these? There's a big file download but do I have to individually go into all of my wads and replace their statusbars?

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

5 hours ago, Sethlab 79461813 said:

Reading through the thread, I can kind of tell that it's just available for whatever wads people want to make them available for. How exactly do I use these? There's a big file download but do I have to individually go into all of my wads and replace their statusbars?

Just load the widescreen assets with your wads by either selecting them and dragging onto the exe, using a launcher or the command line (shortcuts and batch files also apply) like this:

gzdoom.exe -iwad doom2.wad -file eviternity.wad eviternitywide.wad

 

This will load eviternity with an extra file containing the widescreen assets for the wad

[IcarusOfDaggers]

Hey, i found DSDA usable in situations where GZDoom did not cut it. 

 

Install the DSDA doom, then copy wad files into that folder. After that, start up DSDA doom, go to settings, Mouse sensitivity: turn horizontal to 10 and vertical to 0. I found that works best in mimicking GZDoom controls. 

You'll also have to mess around in options - Setup - keybindings to make sure everything works. just make sure strafe left and and right are A and D respectively. That will mimick GZDooms movement. 

[Sethlab 79461813]

I got it up and running and the settings about as close to where I can stand it. 

It definitely feels closer to GZDoom in the mouse and WASD movement but it's still a tad too floaty to use as my main port of choice. I do feel, however, that dsda-doom is infinitely more playable than prboom+ for me. I think for wads that really require the horsepower of dsda-doom, it's a mild concession I have to make to play that small percentage of wads. 

thanks for the help everyone.

[rparhkdtp]

On 6/9/2022 at 6:15 AM, Sethlab 79461813 said:

I can gain a couple of frames by changing from OpenGL to software in GZDoom but yeah, the problem persists.

My computer is running far below yours. It uses built-in graphics. We can help you with optimizing GZDoom if you need it.
(assuming you don't care about graphics)

 

On 6/9/2022 at 5:30 AM, dpJudas said:

Changing the post-processing settings doesn't affect high detail wad performance. That part of the pipeline is pretty constant. The slowdowns in more complex maps is due to how the scene itself is rendered.

From the very beginning, Bloom was thought to bring pain to weak devices. If so, is it not the problem with the 'effects' such as FXAA below it, but the scene in which everything is combined and output? I don't know. I think it's the same thing...
It's accustomed to being cut off in a scene transition. Typically, I think it was the first time I encountered a castle in Frozen Time.