How to make GZDoom look better?

[Brewtal_Legend]

I've seen screen shots and video of gzdoom looking much better than how it seems when I run it. It looks almost as good as jdoom. Particularly the lighting. I've seen colored lighting coming off the projectiles and the lamps.

How do I get the same effects? Are they only specific to certain maps? How do I get it to work with the original maps?

I've already tried playing with the settings in the option menu, but no luck.

[Dragonsbrethren]

By default, lights.pk3 isn't loaded. If you load that (either through -file or with the autoload section of the ini) you'll get the dynamic lights.

[Porsche Monty]

Hardly anybody gets the lights right, and this is not the exception. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

[Brewtal_Legend]

I tried it but didn't see a difference. I added

Path=$PROGDIR/lights.pk3
Path=$PROGDIR/brightmaps.pk3

under the [global.autoload] section in the zdoom-administrator file.

running latest gzdoom

[Dragonsbrethren]

It'll work if you omit $PROGDIR/. I'm not sure why that is, but it's something I found out a while back when trying to autoload another wad.

[GreyGhost]

Try the following -

[Global.Autoload]
Path=.\lights.pk3
Path=.\brightmaps.pk3

[Brewtal_Legend]

Dragonsbrethren said:

It'll work if you omit $PROGDIR/. I'm not sure why that is, but it's something I found out a while back when trying to autoload another wad.

That's odd. I figured that the $PROGDIR/ is used to mean the main directory where the wads and exe are located.

[Brewtal_Legend]

GreyGhost said:

Try the following -

[Global.Autoload]
Path=.\lights.pk3
Path=.\brightmaps.pk3

Thanks man. It worked. Although, still not quite as good as jdoom. But most the good wads seem to be zdoom specific so I wanted a little extra eye candy with it. Thanks again.

Btw, what's the difference between lights.pk3 and brightmaps.pk3?

[Dragonsbrethren]

Brewtal_Legend said:

That's odd. I figured that the $PROGDIR/ is used to mean the main directory where the wads and exe are located.

Yeah, like I said I found out about it back when I was trying to get another wad to load automatically. It doesn't really make any sense, you can put the wad name there by itself after path= or ./ (which should be the same as $PROGDIR/) and it'll work. Anyway, about the brightmaps:

Another feature of the GLDEFS lump is to define brightmaps that can be used to alter the brightness of given pixels within an otherwise static image. Brightmaps can be defined for sprites, flats and textures, but not for patches. This can be used, for example, to make back-lit computer screens, an enemy whose eyes glow in the dark, or to light up only the weapon part of an image when an enemy fires, rather than lighting the whole enemy.

I'm not sure what exactly the default brightmaps are used on; never played with them.

[Brewtal_Legend]

Any idea how to get these working with the Playstation doom TC?

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=16480

I tried putting it in the psxdoom ini, but no luck.

[phi108]

Brightmaps brighten certain areas of sprites/textures, without them being fully bright.

like this: (ignore the lost soul, it didn't work)
http://forum.zdoom.org/download/file.php?id=4894
http://forum.zdoom.org/download/file.php?id=4899

[FooAtari]

Enabling the light maps worked a treat and transformed the look of the game.

I want to setup GZDoom with the options that allow for best image quality, however I am unsure what some of the options do. Are there any that will have an obvious difference to the look of the game other than resolution, filtering etc.

Or is there a guide somwhere for the different settings. A quick Google hasn't found anything.

[Koko Ricky]

What I do is open two windows; one is the Doom 2 directory and one is the Zdoom/Gzdoom wads directory. I just highlight lights.pk3 and whatever mod I want to run, then drag them over to Gzdoom.exe.

[Akenore]

Zandronum looks fantastic when I run it, you can see the individual pixels and it looks so clear and runs so smoothly. GZdoom always looks really mushed together and just kinda old. 

[esselfortium]

27 minutes ago, Akenore said:

Zandronum looks fantastic when I run it, you can see the individual pixels and it looks so clear and runs so smoothly. GZdoom always looks really mushed together and just kinda old. 

This sounds like a case of comparing default settings. GZDoom and Zandronum are both based on the same engine, more or less, and you should be able to get them to look identical to each other by using matching settings. Also, this thread is from 8 years ago.

[Gez]

If you want to see individual pixels, go to Texture options and set "texture filter mode" to either "none" or "none (linear mipmap)".

[Akenore]

1 hour ago, esselfortium said:

This sounds like a case of comparing default settings. GZDoom and Zandronum are both based on the same engine, more or less, and you should be able to get them to look identical to each other by using matching settings. Also, this thread is from 8 years ago.

ah, my bad. I just realized the thread is from 8 years ago. mehhhh