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Doomkid

Things I'd love to see in Doom Legacy

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I still think that Doom Legacy is one of the best source ports out there. Even after it fell greatly in terms of popularity, I never really stopped using it. I'm sad that there aren't dedicated online servers any more, and that wesleyjohnson alone seems to be the only developer who still keeps it updated.

People obviously have an appreciation for Legacy, Zandronum even incorporated full Legacy compatiblility because the WADs created for it were just so damn awesome.

I'd love to see this source port rise from the ashes once more, and I certainly think this is possible. I've started this thread for fellow Legacy fans who hope to see the port make a full-force comeback.

With that said, there are some issues with newer versions of Legacy that I hope to see ironed out, as it seems they turn many players away, which is a damn shame.

Bugs:

- Newer versions (1.44) erase my config each time I quit the game
- No included launcher (This made setting up games a breeze in 1.42!)
- Poor joystick / gamepad support (At least it's there, though)
- Splitscreen games crash when deep water/3D floors come into view
- MIDI files still don't seem to work quite right (de syncs, or sometimes flat out crashes)

Additionally, here are some features that would seriously boost this port in terms of popularity:

- Support for IDE/Doomseeker (This is the big one!)
- At least one dedicated online server (if you plant it, it will grow)
- 4 player splitscreen
- Optional vertical splitscreen
- Improved .BEX support
- Better lag handling/prediction, akin to Odamex or Zandronum
- DECORATE support(?)
- Become an affiliate with the other source port developers!

I don't intend this as a list of "demands", rather, I hope this thread will show that there's still love out there for this old titan of a source port, and to inspire/support wesleyjohnson in all his time and effort.

I understand most of these probably aren't easy fixes - In fact, they'd probably take countless hours - but if they're implemented, I'm sure there would be more than one delighted Doomer on the premises ;)

I hope others around feel the same way I do! Speak up and show your support - The social Doomer's port of choice needs to be shown some sweet lovin'!

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most people develop wads for zdoom based ports now. Sometimes boom compatible, even less vanilla compatible, but almost nobody makes legacy wads anymore.

Personally, I'd much rather see chocolate doom (or a fork thereof), prboom-plus, odamex, and/or zdoom (and by extension zandronum) get 4 player split screen with options for 2 player vertical and horizontal.

Also, I don't think zandronum has full support for legacy maps. Show me a video of Chex Quest Newmaps running properly on zandronum and we'll talk.

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Danfun64 said:

most people develop wads for zdoom based ports now. Sometimes boom compatible, even less vanilla compatible, but almost nobody makes legacy wads anymore.

Personally, I'd much rather see chocolate doom (or a fork thereof), prboom-plus, odamex, and/or zdoom (and by extension zandronum) get 4 player split screen with options for 2 player vertical and horizontal.

Also, I don't think zandronum has full support for legacy maps. Show me a video of Chex Quest Newmaps running properly on zandronum and we'll talk.

Well, the great thing is that Legacy is fully Boom (and of course vanilla) compatible, so there would certainly be no shortage of WADs to play, both cooperative and deathmatch. On that note, another nice feature would be CTF support!

Sure, many people make ZDoom wads, but that's no reason for non-ZDoom derived ports to halt progress. (I don't think that's what you're getting at, but still, I wouldn't want any devs to read this and get the wrong idea/get discouraged.)

I too would really like to see other ports incorporating splitscreen, but due to it being an extremely hard feature to implement, it seems unlikely on all fronts - except Legacy, of course!

Hmm, I swore I read on the Zanny forums that it had full compatibility with Legacy, but turns out it's just 3D floors and deep water. That's a shame, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

In any case, wesleyjohnson has put a buttload of effort into Legacy since he picked it up - The last thing I want to do is stifle him. I say lets encourage him to make it something even better than it already is. :)

EDIT: I know this is completely insignificant, but I always thought Doom Legacy was the coolest source port name :x

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Doomkid said:

Sure, many people make ZDoom wads, but that's no reason for non-ZDoom derived ports to halt progress. (I don't think that's what you're getting at, but still, I wouldn't want any devs to read this and get the wrong idea/get discouraged.)


On the contrary, I think its good that new wads are made to be boom compatible. If a wad requires ZDoom 2.x, then it would be impossible to run in 100% free software, due to the build code in software renderer and the fmod audio code...

I just don't see legacy as a viable platform to produce wads for, unless you mean SRB2, which uses a heavily modified legacy engine.

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Thanks for the support of Doom Legacy.

I am currently working on the release of Doom Legacy 1.45.1, which fixes a number of problems.

Specific problems with Windows 7/8 are difficult to fix. We run Linux, and lack Windows developers. I can only test on Win98, and have not experienced as such problems there.

Config erase. What exactly does that mean ? Doom Legacy saves the new config changes upon exit from the program, so that would overwrite the file. Each user gets their own config. You can have a separate config file using -config, then changes should be saved there.

DoomLegacy 1.45 includes a built-in Launcher. If it is started with a blank command line it will display the built-in Launcher. This has lines for all the command line switches. Only a couple like -mb cannot be used (because it is too late in the execution to apply them anymore), but those switches are mostly obsolete now. The launcher will not let the user continue until errors with the command line are eliminated.

Splitscreen crash with 3dfloors: This is the first I have heard of this. Can you post a bug report at our SourceForge site with a level wad and position that reliably triggers the failure.

Have not had any problems with MIDI files in ages. Please post a detailed bug report. MIDI files do not sync with anything. There are some reports of looping problems with Windows 7/8 where it takes a long time to restart the music. I suspect this may be extraneous MIDI commands unique to Windows handling, so it is going to be hard to diagnose from Linux.

There is a Feature Request system at our site at Source Forge.
Many features request would conflict with some aspect of the Doom Legacy mission. Requests to be compatible with some Windows only tools, or ZDoom, are not going to get much support.

Splitscreen 4. Kind of a small viewing area, but mostly what controls would they use. Splitscreen already relies upon one keyboard player, or two sharing the keyboard, or one using a joystick. Hard to fit any more around a screen. Linux already allows multiple players, if they can log in on their own terminals.

Vertical splitscreen would make it hard to see monsters around the player. The critical monsters are on the same floor with the player, which makes a wide horz. view important. I suppose wide screens would allow side by size better. I suspect multiple windows on the screen may work better, allowing the players to position them as they like.

There is lag prediction code but it is disabled. I do not know how well it works or if it was finished, or found wanting.

I did the BEX code and thought I had covered everything that was relevant to DoomLegacy. Is there something in BEX that does not work?

I believe that DoomLegacy 2.0 has DECORATE support (and HEXEN). It is available from our SourceForge SVN. DoomLegacy 2.0 is idle right now because it needs network code work.

I am currently working on more advanced linedefs and sectors for DoomLegacy. Some of these will be a subset that could be implemented on any port (an idea like Boom enhancements). Others will be specific to supporting Doom Legacy features. Many of these will implement new map actions that do not require voodoo dolls or a complicated script to implement. Actions that manipulate mobile objects in simpler ways are needed.

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wesleyjohnson said:

I am currently working on more advanced linedefs and sectors for DoomLegacy. Some of these will be a subset that could be implemented on any port (an idea like Boom enhancements). Others will be specific to supporting Doom Legacy features. Many of these will implement new map actions that do not require voodoo dolls or a complicated script to implement. Actions that manipulate mobile objects in simpler ways are needed.


I'm all for expanding the Boom feature set. It'd be really nice if there was a viable Boom superset to target multiple ports with.

But please, make sure that your new linedef numbers do not collide with those used by other ports, so if they choose to implement these features as well, they won't get blocked by such collisions (like Eternity's extensions do with both ZDoom and Legacy.)

For reference: Eternity and ZDoom use large parts of the 300 range - albeit differently -, EDGE the lower 400 numbers, I think 500 and up are still free from collisions.

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Finding some unused range is one of my first considerations.
I hope there is a project to map all the linedefs, like for some editors. Eureka is my first stop, because I have that one.

I tried to get splitscreen with 3dfloors to fail, and it worked perfectly. Cannot reproduce the problem on Linux.

Final patches for DoomLegacy 1.45.1 went to SVN. Unless there are any problems that (svn 1133) will be released in about a week as 1.45.1.
It allows 1.45 to read 1.44 savegames among other fixes.

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Just tried the latest 1.45 beta posted on the site, now I remembered why I always delete it after 10 minutes.

But since it's in active development:
Main problem is that there are some rendering glitches, for example on E1M1 between the ceilings in the first room, moving under them creates some overlapping.

Also, trying to access 3d card options fives me an error that I'm in software mode.

Pressing ESC pauses the game but I can still freelook around, the TITLEPIC doesn't fill the screen properly, the marble flats behind the messages in the menu, I think they're supposed to be borders for the text? They don't line up at all. They're too high.

It seems to allow me to choose all resolutions up to but NOT including my native which is 1680x1050.

I'm on win 7 x64.

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Doomkid said:

People obviously have an appreciation for Legacy, Zandronum even incorporated full Legacy compatiblility because the WADs created for it were just so damn awesome.

I suppose you could call it Legacy's legacy?

I believe it was actually GZDoom that supported Legacy maps first and Zandronum merely inherited that.

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Sodaholic said:

I suppose you could call it Legacy's legacy?

I believe it was actually GZDoom that supported Legacy maps first and Zandronum merely inherited that.


Correct.

As for those 'awesome' WADs - yes, all two of them that existed back in the day: Nimrod and Hi-Tech Hell 2... :D

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Gez said:

Add Phobia: The Age and you have about it.



That was after 'back in the day', but it really was the only newer one that was worth some time.

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I remember quite a few single-map Legacy wads from Doom Connector back in the day. It's fun to have multiple ports to make maps for :)

I never knew GZDoom supported those Legacy features, that's great.

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hth2.wad and Chex newmaps deserve special mention.

Doom Legacy does not yet support wide screen in fullscreen. I tried to add it before the release and it broke too badly. Postponed it to next video update session. I play at 800x600, and have tried 1024x768.
I cannot imagine much need for higher resolution play as it does not look much better, just gets slow.
For now, the best play on wide screens is to use a Window mode with a reasonable resolution. Select mouse grabbing if you have difficulty with the mouse escaping.

The main difficulty with larger max resolutions is that the current 1600 max width gets used extensively in all the draw routines, to allocate buffers, scale, and clipping arrays. Every draw segment gets some of these. Just making this larger increases memory usage, and slows down play for everybody, including those using smaller resolutions.

The 3d options menu is blocked unless you are using -opengl because they only apply to that rendering. Otherwise we would have users complaining that they change things in the menu and it does nothing (as those choices do not affect software rendering).

The title pics are deliberately displayed scaled and not stretched because when they were stretched they looked worse.

You say you are getting menus where the background boxes do not align with the menu text. I am not aware of any such except for the launcher window, which only affected some usages. This was fixed in the 1.45.1 release (available in the SVN and soon to be released in binary). If there are any others, I would need to know which menu, Fullscreen/Window mode, and platform particulars.

There are some rendering glitches in opengl, but I do not know of any in software rendering. Have gone after them at least 4 times. They may be related to polygon mapping, or bsp sectors, or to missing sectors (ala a comment seen in PrBoom).
I assume that E1M1 would be Doom shareware, or is it another?

During pause, the player can still freelook. That is not an error, why should it be ?

Some rendering bugs in Vanilla doom have been fixed in DoomLegacy.
This will affect the appearance of some textures, but not significantly. It does make it more reliable for creating new textures in advanced wads.

There are many menu options and some compile options. DoomLegacy can be customized more than most players ever look into.

Submit a bug report. Otherwise you rely on my memory, which is not reliable right now because I am working 15 hours a day on a bookkeeping program right now.

http://doomlegacy.sourceforge.net/

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IMO the only reason to use this port is its split screen. If prboom-plus, crispy doom, odamex and/or zdoom added split screen this port would be pretty much forgotten...

That being said, I would like it if there was an ability to compile the doom legacy wad without non-free patches ala prboom-plus. Fixing the netcode and midi code would also be a plus.

Still, I think that Doom Legacy has run its course, and the port plays like a mess (SRB2 inherits some of its problems...)

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Other than the occasional crash in splitscreen, the port has always seemed quite stable for me. Aside from the previously mentioned issues, what makes you say it plays like a mess? I find it handles quite smoothly in splitscreen evenm on fairly intricate maps, even at the highest possible resolutions.

I hope I'm not the only one awaiting a new verison in the future!

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Doomkid said:

what makes you say it plays like a mess?


I'm not sure if he means stability or gameplay changes.

Legacy was notorious for doing some very ill-advised changes to the gameplay for completely questionable reasons - the worst being that it was impossible to cross any damaging sector without getting damaged. I'm not sure if these things have been fixed in the new builds.

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Do not remember any patches for this, but I play Doom Legacy for every test and I have been dashing across many a damaging sector without harm.

DoomLegacy 1.45.2 has been committed to SVN.
Five patches covering usability issues and some bug fixes. Chexquest Newmaps problems were addressed. Found a latent bug in a command buffer function that would leave an extra character around when three or more commands were appended into the buffer. This made the added key functions in Newmaps erratic. The mouse containment is now released when paused and in menu, so other windows can be visited.

DoomLegacy 1.45.2 binaries for Linux and X11 just went out. I do not know how long it will take for them to become current at the download site. Plan to build the Win98 binaries tomorrow.

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