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DooMAD

Ideal Features for a Source Port

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Before people get any ideas, I would like to make it clear that this thread is asking for people's opinions on their ideal features for a sourceport, rather than the stupid "which existing port is best" threads that make my head hurt. Keeping in mind they are only personal opinions, which may not reflect your own. Some of the stuff listed may seem obvious, but in some ways it's equally important to specify which features wouldn't be supported.

So, if you could have your own personal ultimate source port, what features would it support? Whether it be features already supported in existing ports, or something entirely new.
(and no posts about X,Y or Z port already being the ultimate source port either :p )


Mine would be:

Graphics

An OpenGL renderer that isn't over the top, with the original Doom look and feel
High resolutions
Dynamic lighting and Coronae
Voxel support, rather than models (it might happen :p )


Editing

Sloped floors
3D floors that also allow 3D slopes (imagine the possiblities)
3D coloured lighting and volumetric fog
3D water
Large texture support, but not hi-res
1024 skies
Large map sizes
Polyobjects


Gameplay
(pretty much what all source ports currently support)

Optional Mouse aim
Custom keyboard binds
Optional jumping
Stable multiplayer with bot support


Scripting and other features
(mostly for the sake of compatibility with as many wads as possible, but also because scripting combined with DeHackEd and BEX can create some excellent effects)

Full DeHackEd / BEX support
FraggleScript, ACS and DED support
Full Boom support (well duh)
Heretic / Hexen support, with the ability to use codepointers and linetypes from them
Console and *.cfg support

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My ideal sourceport would contain:
* A flexible and easy-to-learn scripting language that allows much freedom in weapons, things, attacks, level-specific scripts, and powerup effects
* High res graphics
* GL, with an ability to turn off the filtering
* Dynamic lights
* Transparency
* Scaling of any graphic (including weapon graphics)
* High color rendering with PNG support
* FMOD sound support

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Mine would be doom2 with limits removed. Oh wait, that's Boom... then let respawning monsters care if their spot is empty or not, and I'll be glad...

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Good job that won't happen, else the efforts of all those extremely hard working people behind ZDoomGL would have been for naught ;).

Anyway, I just want ZDoom with a bunch of extra stuff Randy's apparently already planning to add someday :).

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Full visplane and seg overflows plus HOMs for excess linedefs, maximum sprites in sight value, full-screen 320x200 res with low detail support, Endoom display on exit, precise DeHackEd patch reading loading as a command prompt environment variable, set memory caches, 1-4 node peer to peer multi-player, -skill 0 support, internal OPL synth MUS player with GUS support, 11025 Hz sound playback, PC sound support, setup.exe compatible key bindings, mouse acceleration settings with vertical movement toggling (from the command line,) broken skies when warping in DOOM II, silent 3rd party pick-up sounds, -cdrom support, glitchy ouch face, 1 block only collision detection, zombies and voodoo dolls, and pre-full startup mouse input.

I may well have forgotten a couple details, but perhaps you get the idea anyway.

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A source port that will make all the maps I make be superly-awesome cool and have no errors and have everything the exact way I vision it. :D

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myk said:

I may well have forgotten a couple details, but perhaps you get the idea anyway.



Welcome to 1994! :D

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DaniJ said:

My ultimate src prot would be:

ZDoomsday


something like this. how possible is this technically?

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something like this. how possible is this technically?

Very possible. It would require an enormous amount of work and would take eons to get it working.

Actually, now that I think about it - Hawthorn.

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all the stuff you guys said + perfect demo compatibility with a variety of ports : old doom EXEs, zDoom, Legacy ... so on

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Graf Zahl said:
Welcome to 1994! :D

Oh, that's awesome, but we're taking about a port here; that doesn't run well on Windows XP. Though it might, sooner or later, if DOS emulators evolve properly.

DaniJ said:
Hawthorn.

Any idea why it's called thus?

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myk said:Any idea why it's called thus?

Not really, it's more the project's development name. AFAIK it will be called Doomsday 2.0 when released.

I found this somewhere, might have some relevance, might not:

Throughout history, hawthorn has had a reputation both as a symbol of hope and as a symbol of evil. At one time Christianity regarded the plant as sacred, due to the belief that it furnished Christ’s crown of thorns.

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ZDoomGL with JDoom's Lighting, Particle and halo effects.

Oh can't forget the Corona's.

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Myk, whay the hell would you WANT visplane overflows and Segmentation Violations? Even if vanilla is your preferred choice, you'd still want those out.

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Zdoom 2.0.64 + compatibilty for Doom2 demos (so I don't need to use PRBoom when watching those Compet-N demos) and for TAS Doom and MBF demos (for TAS, obviously), and the ability to record those demos. Also, with some sort of 3d floor stuff besides Transfer Heights (preferably Legacy 3d-ish).

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lerner said:

Zdoom 2.0.64 + compatibilty for Doom2 demos



Forget it. ZDoom's code is just too different that this could ever work.

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Graf Zahl said:

Forget it. ZDoom's code is just too different that this could ever work.

The question was "Ideal Features for a Source Port", not "the source port I expect to be available tomorrow".

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Scuba Steve said:

Myk, whay the hell would you WANT visplane overflows and Segmentation Violations? Even if vanilla is your preferred choice, you'd still want those out.


sarcasm detector broken?

More or less what doomad said. Albeit with one common scripting language - not several.

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Planky said:

sarcasm detector broken?

No, I believe myk was perfectly serious.

Fredrik: Yes, but what lerner was saying was akin to wishing for a square circle - i.e. you'd need to destroy what it is to make it into what you want it to be.

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The idea was to wish, not to make a realistic suggestion :P.

That being said, it IS possible if you could outfit zdoom with a conversion tool, which it could use whenever the demo is loaded to make a zdoom demo, and then run that. Of course, I don't think Randy will do that, but I don't mind.

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Scuba Steve said:
Myk, whay the hell would you WANT visplane overflows and Segmentation Violations? Even if vanilla is your preferred choice, you'd still want those out.

These would allow you to fully test and edit Doom and Doom2 maps on Windows XP and other such platforms. It would also retain said characteristics for anyone wanting to otherwise experience them properly without having to set up an anachronic machine.

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lerner said:

That being said, it IS possible if you could outfit zdoom with a conversion tool, which it could use whenever the demo is loaded to make a zdoom demo, and then run that.

No, demos can't be converted like that - it is more than just a file format issue. They're not videos, but a recording of player actions, and how they play back depends critically on the exact workings of the engine. The only way you can achieve demo compatibility is by emulating the engine that was used to record it (or vice versa).

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How about a source port that allows you to play
(ok, more like wander through) the levels in the
Doom alphas? I'm very suprised that there dosen't
seem to be such an animal. Some of the alpha levels have
areas that are completely inaccessable, and I can't even
NOCLIP to see what's there. :0

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The ideal source port for me would basically be PrZDoom without all the bugs and including the often forgotten about

myk said:

-skill 0 support

Along with a couple of advanced demo recording & playback features:

  • Walkcam & freely rotatable chasecam
  • Scalable gamespeed (ranging from 10000% to -10000%, thus providing flexible rewind and fast forward support)
  • Support for recording 100% vanilla Doom compatible demos

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