ZDoom vs GZDoom

[Flambure]

Hey I can use GZdoom on open GL but is it normal to prefer Zdoom? I feel like its more classic...... Am I normal?????

[esselfortium]

I think that's pretty normal, yeah.

Personally I prefer using software-rendered ports (Eternity, PrBoom-Plus, ZDoom, and occasionally Chocolate Doom), both for compatibility and because I tend to prefer how maps look in the software renderer, unless they're specifically made for an OpenGL port (such as GZDoom).

[Spleen]

The OpenGL renderer in GZDoom renders colors like modern games, where as ZDoom looks up which color to render in a table with the color and the brightness, like the original DOOM. This causes only 256 different colors to be displayed in ZDoom, so some colors are rendered slightly inaccurately (colors change differently than you'd expect with differing brightness levels), but this has a more "classic feel" to it, so some like it out of nostalgia (heck a lot of people here like DOOM out of nostalgia), as well as allowing the maker of the color pallete to provide the player with a unique atmospheric experience that is difficult to recreate with modern hardware rendering. Also, the OpenGL renderer fades off into black a lot slower - if you play in software mode, things get really dark very quickly as you get farther away from them; this effect is present in OpenGL as well but it is barely noticeable (it is a lot weaker) unless you type testfade "01 01 01" in the console (this makes DOOM more hauntingly beautiful but more difficult, just like turning down the brightness/gamma does :P). But you do realize GZDoom has a software rendering mode just like in ZDoom?

[Mithral_Demon]

It's all on choice-

ZDoom is for the classic feel with out the super "OMG" lighting of GZDoom.
GZDoom is for the modern day feel, still Doom graphics but with enhanced lighting. (Specially lost souls)

[exp(x)]

Mithral_Demon said:

ZDoom is for the classic feel

Heh.

[fraggle]

Please use more descriptive titles for your threads in future - "Is this normal" is a completely useless title.

[Spleen]

Oh, and I just realized: GZDoom and ZDoomGL are two different source ports, even though they both use OpenGL. I just noticed you have one of them in the title and one in the topic. :P I'm actually confused about which one you are referring to now.

[esselfortium]

Spleen said:

Oh, and I just realized: GZDoom and ZDoomGL are two different source ports, even though they both use OpenGL. I just noticed you have one of them in the title and one in the topic. :P I'm actually confused about which one you are referring to now.

Fraggle changed the thread title from "Is this normal" to "ZDoom vs ZDoomGL".

[Gez]

The first ZDoomGL was started by Michaël "Kokak" Ryssen, according to the Doom wiki. When Kokak no longer had the time to maintain and update it, Timmie took over, and pretty soon rewrote it entirely from scratch. But then, Timmie in turn did no longer have the time to maintain it. Graf Zahl started working on a new port, GZDoom, basing his OpenGL code on Timmie's, but rewriting many parts. Graf is still active and doing a good job of keeping GZDoom up to date with ZDoom; while ZDoomGL can be considered a dead port.

Timmie had started working on another rewrite of ZDoomGL which seemed promising but we haven't heard of him ever since.

[Grazza]

Title amended. But in case anyone is confused about what spawned the ZdoomGL discussion, it did refer to that for a while.

[Graf Zahl]

Gez said:

Graf Zahl started working on a new port, GZDoom, basing his OpenGL code on Timmie's, but rewriting many parts.

Correction: I did not base my work on Timmie's. The renderer grew out of my dissatisfaction of PrBoom not being able to handle some of the software renderer's visual effects. This was years before I actually released it.

Only in the final stages I incorporated some code from Timmie.

[ReFracture]

exp(x) said:

Heh.

mm..yeah....

[Lüt]

It's fun to play levels with extreme heights in GZDoom, since you can look directly up and down, instead of just scrolling the forward-view higher or lower. It was for the first time in over a decade that I was finally able to look down that little hole in the ledge by the shotgun in Map24 :D

The only thing I don't like is that it constantly shifts lights levels depending where you move in the room or hall, and some things which should be dark are light and some things which should be visible (and are in software rendered ports) become pitch black. Especially irritating is walking down long halls where the walls start out at a ~128 light level, shift to pitch black in the middle of the hall, and rise back to ~128 when you reach the end. It's gotten me killed a few times in more intense maps.

[Graf Zahl]

Lüt said:

The only thing I don't like is that it constantly shifts lights levels depending where you move in the room or hall, and some things which should be dark are light and some things which should be visible (and are in software rendered ports) become pitch black.

Sounds like the ATI fog bug. There should be no shifting light levels except that light gets dimmer in the distance, just like in software.

It's really irritating that ATI feels no need to fix this. The bug has been present for years... :(
In that case you should disable fog in the menu.

[esselfortium]

Graf Zahl said:

Sounds like the ATI fog bug. There should be no shifting light levels except that light gets dimmer in the distance, just like in software.

It's really irritating that ATI feels no need to fix this. The bug has been present for years... :(
In that case you should disable fog in the menu.

Yeah, this happens to me, too. I was always wondering what caused that. :\

[Lord_Z]

I prefer ZDoom because I don't like the way the sprites look in GZDoom. I assume there is a way to turn it off but I will still use Skulltag over both of them.

[MasterOFDeath]

Lord_Z said:

I prefer ZDoom because I don't like the way the sprites look in GZDoom. I assume there is a way to turn it off but I will still use Skulltag over both of them.

Are you talking about how they look like paper-cut outs? Go to the display options -> opengl options -> sprite billboarding and set it to X/Y.

[Captain Toenail]

Well, I use GZDoom, and if I want to have the old doom renderer I simply change video modes in the options, so there isn't really any need to have both GZDoom and ZDoom in my opinion, because you can configure GZDoom to use the software renderer too...

[Enjay]

I use both, but prefer GZdoom both for playing and editing.

[GreyGhost]

I use both, but having an ATI card (I can hear Graf grinding his teeth) and a preference for software-rendered shadows leads me to favour ZDoom.

[Graf Zahl]

I just added something that may help ATI users suffering from this problem. There's a new option 'Use shaders for fog' that should circumvent ATI's buggy driver.

[Enjay]

Oooh I missed that update. I'll get a build up on the DRD server in the next few minutes. Wait for a file with 198 in the name to go online:

http://svn.drd-team.org/gzdoom/

Heh, looking at the posting times, I hadn't missed it, it really was "just added". Anyway, a build is now up.

[ReFracture]

Graf Zahl said:

I just added something that may help ATI users suffering from this problem. There's a new option 'Use shaders for fog' that should circumvent ATI's buggy driver.

You used shaders to emulate the Fog?

Hm, I remember back when a lot more people were complaining about the final fantasy games and metal gear solid, there was this feature called '8-bit palletized textures' that ati and nvidia had abandoned long ago, completely breaking those games (software rendering was still available, but they looked horrible). All people could get nvidia to say was 'emulate it with a shader.' I could never figure out how to do that.

Do you know anything about that sort of thing, Graf?

[DoomKn1ght]

Graf Zahl said:

I just added something that may help ATI users suffering from this problem. There's a new option 'Use shaders for fog' that should circumvent ATI's buggy driver.

Thanks it's better now without gruesome trails on floor and ceiling
:)