DOOM Retro v5.3 (updated March 3, 2024)

[Fredrik]

Doom Retro looks pretty neat. After testing it for a few minutes, I have a couple of minor gripes:

The near-instant change of view height when moving in/out of water is slightly jarring. It seems much quicker than when moving over ordinary steps. The usual hack for deep water found in some WADs (inserting an invisible -8 height sector) feels good, for comparison.

Rocket smoke trails look vaguely like MS Paint spray can art. An idea worth testing would be to make the smoke frames increasingly translucent towards the end.

Blood splatter on the floor looks just one notch too bright.

[bradharding]

Average said:

... It seems to be something to do with fullscreen mode. :)

It seems that way. In v1.6.6 I introduced an optimization to the code that blits each frame to the screen. I may have to revert that change.

VGA said:

If I run DR and select TNT.wad (it's in another folder) it crashes with a standard windows error. If I select doom2.wad from that same folder it works fine. If I use ZDL to launch DR with the TNT iwad then it works fine.

Why does it crash?

I'm not sure. Just tested my copy of TNT.WAD and it runs fine from the launcher. A couple of things that may help:
1) does the "iwadfolder" setting in doomretro.cfg change to the folder TNT.WAD is in when you try to load it from the launcher?
2) could you please open TNT.WAD in a text editor and let me know if the first 4 chars are "IWAD" or "PWAD"?

kb1 said:

It's not that bad. The worst part is in putting faith in code that looks way different, especially when seeing Killough's one-liners :)

I'd recommend starting with a newer port, like PrBoom+. More recent fixes, and cleaner code. If you go that route, you'll also have to decide early-on how tight you want old demo support to be, cause PrBoom+ (and to a lesser degree, Boom) is chock-full with demo compatibility checks and fixes.

I have borrowed some code from PrBoom+ already, and am well versed in the Killoughisms. :) As for demo compatibility: no need, as DR has no demo playback/recording.

I guess I do have partial Boom support: Dehacked patches with Boom extensions are supported.

Fredrik said:

... The near-instant change of view height when moving in/out of water is slightly jarring. It seems much quicker than when moving over ordinary steps. The usual hack for deep water found in some WADs (inserting an invisible -8 height sector) feels good, for comparison.

Rocket smoke trails look vaguely like MS Paint spray can art. An idea worth testing would be to make the smoke frames increasingly translucent towards the end.

Blood splatter on the floor looks just one notch too bright.

Thanks for your suggestions.

The change of view height for liquid is the same as it is in Heretic and Hexen, but sure, I'll look into a smoother movement.

The rocket smoke trails are just using the standard bullet puff sprites. Varying the translucency is an interesting idea, and should be easy to implement.

You're probably right about the bloodsplat color. I've tried to get it to match the blood shown on corpses, but I'll look into it some more.

[VGA]

That iwadfolder variable is not being updated. My TNT.wad had the proper IWAD header, its md5 is
1d39e405bf6ee3df69a8d2646c8d5c49

Looking here:
http://www.theultimatedoom.com/wads/hashes

It's: Final Doom - Evilution (Fixed)

[VGA]

I was messing around, it was still crashing with TNT.wad and working fine with HacX and others, then I tried it under debugging and it worked fine, now it works fine normally, too. I haven't restarted the PC yet.

Looks like some weird race condition bug, it is not reproducible. If you send me an executable compiled with symbols I could see in Visual studio's frame stack in which call it screwes up I guess.

[bradharding]

VGA said:

I was messing around, it was still crashing with TNT.wad and working fine with HacX and others, then I tried it under debugging and it worked fine, now it works fine normally, too. I haven't restarted the PC yet.

Looks like some weird race condition bug, it is not reproducible. If you send me an executable compiled with symbols I could see in Visual studio's frame stack in which call it screwes up I guess.

Very strange. Unfortunately I won't be able to get to my PC for a couple of days. Could you send me the Windows error report from Event Viewer? I'll follow it up as soon as I get the chance.

[bradharding]

Average said:

I don't know what I've done wrong but ever since 1.6.6 I've not been able to play the game.

The game boots fine but the screen is a garble squeezed into a few pixels in the top left of the screen. I can hit enter to bring up the menu and the like. I just can't see the game. I've tried changing resolutions in the cfg but to no avail. I've also wiped the previous builds and created a new folder with both 1.6.6 and 1.6.7. Is there data stored somewhere else on my computer? I've looked in my appdata folder but found nothing.

I've no idea what changed or why it started happening... it just did!

I'm on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit with a GTX780 and i7 4770k. :)

Hi. This is for Average specifically, but may be of interest to others who are having this problem as well. It would seem the cause of this issue is due to a recent Nvidia driver release and use of SDL's directx video driver. Changing the "videodriver" setting in doomretro.cfg from "directx" to "windib" should fix the issue. Future versions of DOOM RETRO will have "windib" as default.

[Sandstormer]

The screen stutters when I try to turn while using the mouse. I'm checking everything on my end to see if there is maybe something wrong with my system, but I've not been able to find anything. I've tried adjusting mouse sensitivity, but no luck. Any recommendations?

[VGA]

Sandstormer said:

The screen stutters when I try to turn while using the mouse. I'm checking everything on my end to see if there is maybe something wrong with my system, but I've not been able to find anything. I've tried adjusting mouse sensitivity, but no luck. Any recommendations?

Try changing that setting that Brad mentioned in his previous post. Or try deleting your .cfg file.

[Average]

@Brad; Thanks for the tip. It's now working fine and dandy. :)

[bradharding]

Sandstormer said:

The screen stutters when I try to turn while using the mouse. I'm checking everything on my end to see if there is maybe something wrong with my system, but I've not been able to find anything. I've tried adjusting mouse sensitivity, but no luck. Any recommendations?

It seems some people seem to be experiencing this bug. Despite my suggestion of changing "directx" to "windib" in my previous post, try the following:

1) Check doomretro.cfg. If "videodriver" is set to "windib", change it to "directx".
2) Run Doom Retro and test.
3) If the stuttering still occurs, check doomretro.cfg again. If "videodriver" has changed back to "directx" it means Doom Retro was unable to initialize the graphics using "directx" and so tried "windib".
4) Try installing the latest DirectX for your version of Windows (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/179113/en-AU).

The next version of Doom Retro will have SDL2 support and should resolve this issue.

[Sandstormer]

That did the trick! Thanks, Brad!

[VGA]

That pool of blood in Memento Mori 2 MAP02 is a beautiful sight to behold with the animated liquids, Brad, gj!

I have a question, which parts of the minor sprite fixing project have you incorporated? I don't want to load it because shadows get disabled.

[bradharding]

VGA said:

That pool of blood in Memento Mori 2 MAP02 is a beautiful sight to behold with the animated liquids, Brad, gj!

I have a question, which parts of the minor sprite fixing project have you incorporated? I don't want to load it because shadows get disabled.

Yeah, the effect does look quite good. On that map, especially.

I only use the corrected offsets from that project (although they are tweaked a bit further). The bits involving actual changes to the sprites themselves aren't included.

[VGA]

Well, at least the SSG sprite must be included, it doesn't have that diabolical stray brown pixel on its left. Do you intend to incorporate it fully by any chance?

I keep finding way to make Doom Retro crrrash hard, try to load just TTP.wad from this wad:
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/s-u/ttp103.zip

Cripsy Doom throws a proper error, Doom Retro crashes (standard window exception handler). Its crashes are especially annoying because the mouse is partially captured and the render window initiated so it's hard to kill the process or click the "close this program"

[bradharding]

Oh, forgot to mention, Doom Retro also corrects the brown pixel in the SSG. It has since v1.0.

I'll check out the wad. Thanks. In the case of crashes like this, the next version of DR uses SDL2, which releases control of the mouse a lot faster. (Of course, I'd prefer if it didn't crash in the first place!)

[VGA]

Just compiled from the github repo in VS2013, the crash I had with loading TNT.wad through the dialog is gone now. And yes, now the mouse is being released when it crashes, yay!

If I run it under debugging, VS encounters an exception at > doomretro.exe!LoadDefaultCollection(default_collection_t * collection) Line 730 C

Even though the debug build runs under normal execution without crashing.

[bradharding]

VGA said:

I keep finding way to make Doom Retro crrrash hard, try to load just TTP.wad from this wad:
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/s-u/ttp103.zip

Cripsy Doom throws a proper error, Doom Retro crashes (standard window exception handler).

If I run it under debugging, VS encounters an exception at > doomretro.exe!LoadDefaultCollection(default_collection_t * collection) Line 730 C

Even though the debug build runs under normal execution without crashing.

Fixed and fixed. :)

[VGA]

bradharding said:

Fixed and fixed. :)

Have another one!
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?file=levels/doom2/Ports/m-o/njma01.zip

I didn't expect it to work, but there should be proper error messages for incompatible maps/nodes(?)

[fabian]

VGA said:

I didn't expect it to work, but there should be proper error messages for incompatible maps/nodes(?)

It states quite explicitly that it's intended for ZDoom only in the accompanying .txt file. Also, the map is in Hexen format which DR doesn't support.

[VGA]

fabian said:

It states quite explicitly that it's intended for ZDoom only in the accompanying .txt file. Also, the map is in Hexen format which DR doesn't support.

Yes, but Chocolate Doom stops with an error while Doom Retro just crashes. It should never crash, regardless of the wads loaded.

[VGA]

Playing Zone300, fucking awesome. I had a crash in map 15 and then the sound was muted. I finally fixed it the next day by changing the music slider, weird.

At the end of map 28 I encountered a weirdness:


I think DR should check the floor and if it's a sky then don't spill blood on it :-D

Also, are you sure that the default gamma correction of 0,75 isn't too low? I always get it up to Off, because it's dark as fuck. Have you checked it out on other monitors?

[bradharding]

VGA said:

Playing Zone300, fucking awesome. I had a crash in map 15 and then the sound was muted. I finally fixed it the next day by changing the music slider, weird.

Another quirk of using SDL (on Win7 and up).

At the end of map 28 I encountered a weirdness...
I think DR should check the floor and if it's a sky then don't spill blood on it :-D

I think so too! Thanks!

Also, are you sure that the default gamma correction of 0,75 isn't too low? I always get it up to Off, because it's dark as fuck. Have you checked it out on other monitors?

I have had some complaints that it's too dark. I'll consider it.

[VGA]

Fuck, loaded BTSX E1 and now the sound became some weird static, mostly silence though. How can I reset it? Changing the volume slider doesn't help now. Why doesn't re-running the process work?

Maybe a reset will fix it, but I can't do that right now. I'm using the latest code in github, so I understand that it's unstable, but how do you fix this when it happens to you?

[bradharding]

VGA said:

Fuck, loaded BTSX E1 and now the sound became some weird static, mostly silence though. How can I reset it? Changing the volume slider doesn't help now. Why doesn't re-running the process work?

Maybe a reset will fix it, but I can't do that right now. I'm using the latest code in github, so I understand that it's unstable, but how do you fix this when it happens to you?

Honestly, I have no idea. Other than using SDL2_mixer, nothing has changed with the sound code. Try a reboot. Try running something else that uses SDL, such as Chocolate DOOM. I'll look into if this is a common occurrence for people, and if there's anything that can be done about it code-wise.

[VGA]

I think I found the problem or part of it: somehow the s_maxslicetime in my config was set to 0.


By the way, I'm finding hard to optimize my play when using the fullscreen HUD because I don't see the ammo for all the guns, so I can't properly decide which gun to use, if/when to pick up specific ammo, whether to conserve ammo etc. Do you think it's possible to cram some more info in there? I can't go back to the standard HUD bar, I love my widescreen.

[Krazov]

Maybe it would be possible to use black pillarboxes on the sides for additional info? Just a thought.

[VGA]

Played a little after resolving the music+sound issue and after saving/dying a few times, my save got corrupted. I died and got this error:
P_UnarchiveSpecials: unknown tclass 163 in savegame
Wad is here:
http://www.paulcorfiatis.com/zone300.zip

Broken save is here:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/uvesno

Krazov said:

Maybe it would be possible to use black pillarboxes on the sides for additional info? Just a thought.

There are no black bars, it's actually fullscreen+widescreen.

[Krazov]

So you must be using 16:10 ratio. In 16:9, which is the new black, there is some space.

[bradharding]

VGA said:

Played a little after resolving the music+sound issue and after saving/dying a few times, my save got corrupted. I died and got this error:
P_UnarchiveSpecials: unknown tclass 163 in savegame

I'll look into it. Thanks. What map did you last save on?

As for s_maxslicetime: I'm not sure. Nowhere in the code is s_maxslicetime set to anything, other than being read from doomretro.cfg. If it happens again, can you please make a note of exactly what you did leading up to it, and send me the doomretro.cfg?

I'm unlikely to make any changes to the HUD, preferring it to be as minimal as possible.

[VGA]

It was Zone 300 - MAP29 "Den of Torture"

Maybe when I was trying to debug in Visual Studio and ran into that exception during (afair) configuration loading, the cfg got screwed and I copied it over or something (?) I certainly didn't change that variable to "0" myself :-D

By the way, where is the -nwtmerge functionality of Choco?