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Csonicgo

CDOOM's horrible brokenness

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I think we all know about CDOOM, the port inspired by Jesus Christ Himself- but it has some problems. Namely, it's impossible to use.

First off, the controls options menu is busted. you can't select the arrow keys in movement. Second, the mouse is horribly broken. I can't turn around without cdoom intermittently forgetting my mouse input, then trying to "fix" it later. sometimes I can get it stuck looking at a certain angle.

Third, the sound is crackling, and not playing. Sometimes doomguy sounds don't play, which is blasphemy!

This port seems to have a lot of promise as a DOS port, but these shortcomings make it worthless in playing. This sucks, because if these problems were fixed, it might have been my DOS port of choice.

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printz said:

Probably because it's not really under development by now?


I'm sure if the author knew about it he would look into it. I suppose he's a keyboarder. I can't seem to get in contact with him. I assume it is just a code error in the mouse code that he tweaked.

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Why do you even bother? It's a long dead and forgotten port, only "good" for playing some of its port-specific maps (ALL made by the port's author, who also made some incredible crap contributions to idgames).

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It Doesn't even play THE.SKY.MAY.BE... or does it?

chungy said:

Heh, I hadn't even heard of this port before.


They say "You learn something new everyday" but they never said it was always something worth learning.

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You forgot the crashes. It crashes a lot and harshly.

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CDOOM? The one that, a couple years ago, kept getting reuploaded to the /idgames database just so it'd continue appearing in the /newstuff chronicles (along with that Robocop mod)?

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That port is a prime example of the IDFH principle (I Develop For Him) gone terribly, terribly wrong.

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Maes said:

That port is a prime example of the IDFH principle (I Develop For Him) gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Sounds like an interesting principle I've never heard of, but Google is not helping. Link, please? :D

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Can't find it again either...basically some utility's programmer decided to call his "company" 'I develop for Him' alluding to Jesus Christ, and he allegedly dedicated all his software creations to Him.

Sort of like the CDoom guy, but done better (for one the utilities were actually decent). Just can't remember what it was about, at all :-/

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This is very very unfortunate, considering CDoom was based on MBF (just like Eternity), my port of choice.

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It's just getting harder to find a good DOS port. none are actively being worked on, and some that were (EE for one) can't be DOS anymore.

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Why would you want a DOS port these days? I don't mean to sound obtuse I'm just not sure of any benefits - call it ignorance! :)

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PFL said:

Why would you want a DOS port these days? I don't mean to sound obtuse I'm just not sure of any benefits - call it ignorance! :)


Because a game made for DOS with no good DOS enhancement port is kinda lame. I know that MBF and SMMU may work, but knowing how far EE has come, there have been made known several critical flaws in those ports that need to be fixed. They won't be, since no one is available to backport them to a discontinued sourceport.

plus, this port was supposed to have an uncapped framerate in DOS, something I have never seen before. I have an old computer atm I'm salvaging to be a DOS machine, and was amazed at the shittiness of the ports for the OS Doom was played on. :(

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I have tried to contact the author. this is the message I sent.

Hi!

I take it that you are the main developer of Cdoom.I think there are some issues that need to be resolved:

The mouse is not working well. I cannot do a full 360 degree turn well, and the mouse movement "sticks" in weird places. it's impossible to play for me this way.

The sounds are still popping and cutting out. Sometimes imps never play their pain sound. sometimes the player's sounds cut out. This needs to be addressed as well.

The controls options menu is busted. you can't select the arrow keys in movement. selecting "left arrow" to turn left or to bind to any action goes back to the other menu screen, and doesn't set the key.

Some OPL sounds are not exactly right. Most of DOOM2 is right, but a lot of original DOOM still sounds unlike the OPL3 sound I remember. I'm using a 100MHz Pentium with SB16 and 64 MB RAM.

While running Windows 3.1, Cdoom is runnable due to the non-reliance on the DMX timer. If these issues were addressed (and fixed), I think Cdoom could become a very interesting DOS port to play.

I await your response and hope that my mention of these issues will help your port fare better in the future.

Thanks

a second later I am told that the e-mail address is no longer valid. *sigh*.

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Is CDoom GNU? And you're a programming enthusiast? If both so, then why don't you build your own branch based on CDoom? Sounds fair enough.

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Yeah, but I have no idea how to compile anything in DOS or work with the doom source code yet. :(

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UNBELIEVABLE!

At the time of this posting, Carlos, the creator of cdoom, uploaded two more levels to /idgames/. This dude has to be trolling me. I don't want more levels, carlos, I want the port to work!

Geez, man! You make a nigga rage!


edit: resent to his "new" e-mail address.

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I have Cdoom installed in FreeDOS on my laptop and it works fine. I can select the arrow keys as controls. As for the sounds cutting off, didn't vanilla Doom and some older source ports have a limit to how many sounds could be played at once?

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bgraybr said:

As for the sounds cutting off, didn't vanilla Doom and some older source ports have a limit to how many sounds could be played at once?


Even modern source ports have them, depending on the library used. The limit is of course higher than in the DOS days (Vanilla ranged from 4 to 8 channels), but it's there nonetheless. Some launchers for older ZDooms allowed to select 8..32 channels.

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Maes said:
The limit is of course higher than in the DOS days (Vanilla ranged from 4 to 8 channels), but it's there nonetheless.

The setup program restricts it to a maximum of 8 (in v1.9) but I'm not certain what the real limit is in vanilla. I didn't really notice a difference from 8 when setting a higher value directly through the CFG file, though. Not sure if there's a way to test this in a clear way...

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In registered v1.1 (and below 1.666?) the limit was 4 channels.

I don't know if the DMX library itself had a limit, but a practical limit to combine software audio mixing with other processing on an entry-level 486 system was 4-8 channels, depending on the game and the sound library used.

Now, the doom source code does include a sort of crude software mixer (if you choose to use an interrupt-based mixer instead of a sound server), at least that one doesn't seem to have any hardcoded limits (you can iterate over any number of channels, if you alter the source code).

myk said:

Not sure if there's a way to test this in a clear way...


Maybe if you use some custom sounds of a voice counting "one... two...three..." etc. and make a test wad where you can trigger a discrete number of events e.g. barrels exploding, doors opening, or stairs rising that use those sounds.

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Lifts do not make sounds at all.
The mouse still refuses to allow me to spin continuously until I run out of mousepad.

Note that I'm playing this on pure DOS machine. This isn't DOSBOX, or a virtual machine. If the damned exe can't play in DOS, what good is it that it plays in DOSBOX?

This Port suffers from a lack in testing.

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I honestly don't know how much testing -if any at all- goes into those "concept ports", but most of them are a "let's slap the SC files together, add our own video and sound drivers, and voila', a NEW and ENHANCED Doom is born!".

Now, CDoom is supposed to have RoR extensions to make it worthwhile, so it's -hopefully- not in that league. The author provided or even wrote his own sound libraries for DOS, and are you sure you did anything possible to increase sensitivity? Tried with different mice and mouse drivers etc. ? What sound card are you using? If it's a crappy "SB compatible" it may work intermittently.

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Maes said:

I honestly don't know how much testing -if any at all- goes into those "concept ports", but most of them are a "let's slap the SC files together, add our own video and sound drivers, and voila', a NEW and ENHANCED Doom is born!".

Now, CDoom is supposed to have RoR extensions to make it worthwhile, so it's -hopefully- not in that league. The author provided or even wrote his own sound libraries for DOS, and are you sure you did anything possible to increase sensitivity? Tried with different mice and mouse drivers etc. ? What sound card are you using? If it's a crappy "SB compatible" it may work intermittently.


it has its own mouse driver apparently. tried 9 mice. mouse sensitivity keeps resetting to "9". tried to manually edit it, didn't work. 100MHz Pentium with authentic Creative SB16 and 64 MB RAM.

EDIT: I know waht to do. I'll make a video of how horribly broken it is tomorrow and upload it to youtube. :3

EDIT2: His e-mail address he used to upload his latest creations is either a redirecting email address, or is fake. I cannot get in touch with him at all, I get messages from the mailer daemon that the mail can't be sent. Very fishy.

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I wouldn't place too much trust in his address or his works being genuine - just look what he has submitted to the archive after CDoom: most are joke utilities, and development has stopped years ago.

Even worse, if they ARE genuine then I'd say he lost his mind somewhere in the way, so contacting him and asking him to resume work on something that -by now- seems way out of his league is just for the lulz.

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Csonicgo said:

EDIT: I know waht to do. I'll make a video of how horribly broken it is tomorrow and upload it to youtube. :3

Make sure to accompany that video with a frustrated voice-over ala "Let's NOT play ...".

EDIT2: His e-mail address he used to upload his latest creations is either a redirecting email address, or is fake. I cannot get in touch with him at all, I get messages from the mailer daemon that the mail can't be sent. Very fishy.

Using an invalid email address when uploading is against the /idgames rules. You could report that and hope that those uploads are removed, and do so until Carlos uploads something with a correct email address.

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printz said:

Make sure to accompany that video with a frustrated voice-over ala "Let's NOT play ...".

Using an invalid email address when uploading is against the /idgames rules. You could report that and hope that those uploads are removed, and do so until Carlos uploads something with a correct email address.


Hold yer horses, it was probably a real email address at some point in time

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