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KennyJC

Doom on widescreen monitors.

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I'm gonna upgrade my monitor and am considering a widescreen. Seems like I have little choice in the matter since the major electronic outlets in my area are selling widescreen and widescreen only...

But since Doom is an old game and will have no support for widescreen, doesn't it get stretched badly? Does it look horrible? Is there a fix for it?

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Pretty much all ports nowadays make a windowed mode possible, so that you could have a Doom window with the standard 4:3 resolution in the middle of your screen. Also, ZDoom and its derivatives (and maybe other ports too) provide widescreen resolutions which don't stretch the image, but widen your field of view.

And you can always try a little harder to buy a non-widescreen monitor. There is the internet.

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Original Doom was 320x200. That's 16:10, the same aspect ratio as widescreen resolutions. But yes, modern ports have widescreen support. I run at 1920x1200, double pixels.

Honestly, you won't save much money going 4:3 if you're looking for a new LCD. Widescreen is getting a big push.

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Bucket said:

Original Doom was 320x200. That's 16:10, the same aspect ratio as widescreen resolutions. /B]



No, it is not. 320x200 is and has always been a 4:3 resolution, regardless of the number of pixels.

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Original Doom was never meant to be displayed as 16:10. You're just assuming that 320x200 should be displayed with square pixels.

But anyhow, most modern ports should be able to do widescreen displays without distortion. On the other hand, Chocolate Doom has the ability to pillarbox the image so that the original 4:3 aspect ratio isn't ruined :)

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Graf Zahl said:

No, it is not. 320x200 is and has always been a 4:3 resolution, regardless of the number of pixels.

So what, the old 320x200 will still fit nicely with the new annoyingly widescreen monitors.

It's 320x240 or 640x480 or 800x600 or 1024x768 etc. the type of resolution that's really 4:3 and looks bad on widescreen monitors.

It sucks when proper resolutions for the monitor aren't supported as well.

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Tried playing it(via ZDoom) on a Flatscreen TV - pretty nice.
But the better choice is to buy an old CRT-monitor - 24 inches of fun. For gaming I prefer CRTs.

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This is as good a chance as any...

What the HELL is up with Doom's resolution? 320x200 is so ridiculously nonstandard, why was that chosen? When I play in newer ports, what resolutions preserve the real Doom "look"? 320x240 stretches Doom's graphics to look taller than the real appearance, but 320x200 always looked like it was squished? What's the deal?

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320x200 was a very common resolution when Doom was released. Unusual ratio or not, most 256 colour games at the time used it. Something to do with what VGA cards supported?

I thought that Zdoom was supposed to do some behind the scenes "magic" to make the proportions look right at resolutions such as 640x480 (etc)

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printz said:

So what, the old 320x200 will still fit nicely with the new annoyingly widescreen monitors.

No, it won't, because 320x200 is supposed to be displayed at a 4:3 aspect ratio. The pixels in 320x200 mode aren't square. If you run Doom in a square pixel mode, it looks squashed.

The whole thing is kind of confusing. I suggest you read the Doom wiki article on Aspect Ratio.

Scuba Steve said:

This is as good a chance as any...

What the HELL is up with Doom's resolution? 320x200 is so ridiculously nonstandard, why was that chosen? When I play in newer ports, what resolutions preserve the real Doom "look"? 320x240 stretches Doom's graphics to look taller than the real appearance, but 320x200 always looked like it was squished? What's the deal?

Doom ran in VGA, and 320x200 was one of the only "proper" VGA modes; it was also the only mode to support 8-bit color depth.

Rather oddly, it is possible to use a non-standard 320x240 8-bit mode with VGA cards, in a hack called Mode X. The odd part is that Mode X was popularised by Michael Abrash, who also helped out in some of Doom's graphics programming. It's odd that they didn't use Abrash's technique to get a square pixel mode for Doom, as I'm sure it would have simplified development.

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fraggle said:
No, it won't, because 320x200 is supposed to be displayed at a 4:3 aspect ratio. The pixels in 320x200 mode aren't square. If you run Doom in a square pixel mode, it looks squashed.

The whole thing is kind of confusing. I suggest you read the Doom wiki article on Aspect Ratio.

What may be confusing (or was to me before reading more into it) is "aspect ratio" itself in reference to pixels and rendered appearance. As aspect ratio refers to the assumed proportions of the screen (4:3 could be a 12" x 9" screen). Since 320x240, 800x600, or 1024x768 have a ratio of 4:3 in regard to the number of pixels, the pixels are square in a 4:3 screen, but since Doom uses less pixels for height but also fills the screen, the difference means those pixels need to be taller (200 vs. 240 means they are 1.2 times taller).

I think I understand now why 1280x1024 was missing as an option on my system till I ran ZDoom at that resolution. It wasn't listed by the drivers because they initially listed only those for the 4:3 aspect ratio, and 1280x1024 makes square pixels at 5:4.

Rather oddly, it is possible to use a non-standard 320x240 8-bit mode with VGA cards, in a hack called Mode X. The odd part is that Mode X was popularised by Michael Abrash, who also helped out in some of Doom's graphics programming. It's odd that they didn't use Abrash's technique to get a square pixel mode for Doom, as I'm sure it would have simplified development.

I'm skeptical about him being involved in graphics programming for the DOOM games... or does he say otherwise somewhere? Of what I've read from him, he's talked only about Quake. He seems to have joined up for the period after DOOM II, when Carmack had quit coding for the DOOM games and was into Quake. I wonder if Abrash was really involved in The Ultimate DOOM in any way, or listed in the credits just because he was part of id's development team at the moment (the in-game credits seem to have a lot to do with proprietary rights rather than necessarily with direct contribution, or else people like Tom Hall would have been listed), because they take an all-or-nothing stance in regard to membership. I guess it would be worth asking Carmack or Romero about this, to have accurate info on the wiki and whatnot.

Also, perhaps they had graphics editing tools that worked using a 320x200 (or 640x400) full screen mode, to allow artists to see the graphics as intended while modifying them.

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myk said:

Also, perhaps they had graphics editing tools that worked using a 320x200 (or 640x400) full screen mode, to allow artists to see the graphics as intended while modifying them.


I've heard it said a number of times that they used Deluxe Paint for at least some of the pixel pushing. Anyone know if it's true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Paint

DP could run at a number of different resolutions. On the Amiga I'm sure that it supported 320x240 (amongst others) and on the PC is supported a variety of options too. The PC version supports 320x200 in a number of colour depths, but does not list 320x240. At least my copy doesn't.

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myk said:

What may be confusing (or was to me before reading more into it) is "aspect ratio" itself in reference to pixels and rendered appearance. As aspect ratio refers to the assumed proportions of the screen (4:3 could be a 12" x 9" screen). Since 320x240, 800x600, or 1024x768 have a ratio of 4:3 in regard to the number of pixels, the pixels are square in a 4:3 screen, but since Doom uses less pixels for height but also fills the screen, the difference means those pixels need to be taller (200 vs. 240 means they are 1.2 times taller).

Yeah, it's definitely the "pixel aspect ratio" vs. "physical aspect ratio" thing that's the confusing part. Square pixel modes (eg. 640x480) always have the same pixel and physical aspect ratio (since the pixels are physically rendered square), while in non-square pixel modes, they're different. 320x200 has a 16:10 pixel aspect ratio, which is considered a "widescreen" aspect ratio, but 320x200 is not a widescreen mode, because its physical aspect ratio is 4:3.


I'm skeptical about him being involved in graphics programming for the DOOM games... or does he say otherwise somewhere? Of what I've read from him, he's talked only about Quake. He seems to have joined up for the period after DOOM II, when Carmack had quit coding for the DOOM games and was into Quake. I wonder if Abrash was really involved in The Ultimate DOOM in any way, or listed in the credits just because he was part of id's development team at the moment (the in-game credits seem to have a lot to do with proprietary rights rather than necessarily with direct contribution, or else people like Tom Hall would have been listed), because they take an all-or-nothing stance in regard to membership. I guess it would be worth asking Carmack or Romero about this, to have accurate info on the wiki and whatnot.

It is rather unclear. I think he probably had some involvement in the low-level graphics programming. Although Doom doesn't run at 320x240, it does seem to use the double-buffering feature of Mode X.

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In his book Abrash only mentions Doom in a chapter because it serves as a well understandable example for bsp tree usage - given Doom's limited 3D-nature.
Carmack, and many others, incorperated Abrash' ModeX into their games.
If the info is right, they only knew each other via IRC or something during Dooms development....


...long distance geek affair ^^

http://www.byte.com/abrash/chapters/gpbb59.pdf

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After buying a 19 inch wide screen monitor, I find that the only resolution that works properly on this monitor is 1440x900.

Every other resolution is very blurry, at least when it comes to text.

I googled for a solution only to find many other people with the same problem and no real solutions to the problem.

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_bruce_ said:
Carmack, and many others, incorperated Abrash' ModeX into their games.
If the info is right, they only knew each other via IRC or something during Dooms development....

I'm no coder and thus know not how much info Carmack would need but these articles are from the very early 90s, so perhaps he could just have read about the stuff without getting in touch. Double buffering seems to be described here (from '91), if I am not mistaken. Heh, incidentally he mentions "an imp" in the article.

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KennyJC said:

After buying a 19 inch wide screen monitor, I find that the only resolution that works properly on this monitor is 1440x900.

Every other resolution is very blurry, at least when it comes to text.

I googled for a solution only to find many other people with the same problem and no real solutions to the problem.

LCDs are designed to work at a single resolution. Unlike CRTs, the size of their pixels remains constant. Using other resolutions will force the monitor to scale them to its native resolution.

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Yeah, in mine it's the same; 1280x1024 is the resolution that looks really clean, and the Computer display standard Wikipedia article mentions SXGA (1280x1024, 5:4, 32 bpp) is what 17" LCDs usually use. Even the full screen DOS prompt thus looks a bit "blurry" but as the res is low and there's only simple text it's not bad, and certainly fine in-game, as in DOOM.

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Bloodshedder said:

LCDs are designed to work at a single resolution. Unlike CRTs, the size of their pixels remains constant. Using other resolutions will force the monitor to scale them to its native resolution.


Is there any difference between TFT and LCD monitors? I didn't have any problems with the square flatscreen I used to have a while ago. Not sure if it was an LCD or not though.

I'm gonna just return this monitor if I can find a flatscreen like the one I used to have. I can't run games at 1440x900 because of reduced frame rate. 1280x768 is fine for visuals, but the text in games is pretty much unreadable.

1 fixed resolution = gay.

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KennyJC said:
1280x768 is fine for visuals, but the text in games is pretty much unreadable.

That effect seems more extreme than in mine, as while I notice a bit of blur stuff is always still readable on it using any resolution available.

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myk said:

That effect seems more extreme than in mine, as while I notice a bit of blur stuff is always still readable on it using any resolution available.


Well I may have exaggerated a little, but the text is still blurry/annoying enough for me to want to return the monitor.

Although I don't have a problem with 1440x900 for windows desktop, other people use this computer and they want 1280x786, however, the blurred text is even worse for windows as it is with games in this video mode.

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The text on my dad's widescreen monitor was fiercely blurry until I found an "image sharpness" option hidden deep within the monitor's menu. Just turning that up helped a great deal with no performance hit - which begs the question "Why was this not maxed out by default?" Anyways, you might as well look through your monitor settings one more time, just in case.

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Sometimes low resolutions look perfectly fine on an LCD, if it can be scaled without blending (eg, 640x480 on a natively 1280x960 screen), heh

Can't Windows have different resolutions for different users? I would find it kind of sad if they still have the one-resolution-for-everybody limitation I remember from Windows 95 (and it sucked).

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Enjay said:

I've heard it said a number of times that they used Deluxe Paint for at least some of the pixel pushing. Anyone know if it's true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Paint

Yes, I've read this in some articles somewhere (technically it was Deluxe Paint 2). They switched over during Quake 2 or Quake 3, if I remember correcly - might have been Q3, since I think Quake2 still uses all 8-bit textures. It's a fun program to play around in - the smudge tool leads to some very familiar gradients :)

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david_a said:

Yes, I've read this in some articles somewhere (technically it was Deluxe Paint 2). They switched over during Quake 2 or Quake 3, if I remember correcly - might have been Q3, since I think Quake2 still uses all 8-bit textures. It's a fun program to play around in - the smudge tool leads to some very familiar gradients :)


The classic tool that helped to produce some of the finest pixel-art ever.

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It's a shame that there hasn't been a newer program with the same functionality as DP. I still have a copy that I use when my other programs can't quite do what I want. I've tried a few programs that claim to do the same job but none really manage to pull it off IMO. I love the various perspective and fill tools.

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