Alexandra

From the start. I don't remember first encountering Doomworld but I remember personalities like Linguica and Dukrous from back at the dawn. At some point I lost/forgot/abandoned my original account, don't even know what the username was. I regret not having a way-back registered date anymore. :) The main memory I do have from those days is the first source ports hitting. Doom Legacy is the one I remember liking. It was a big deal to get 3D accel in Doom back then, goofy as it ended up looking. I was also involved with a TC modding group around that timeframe.

This is the app that finally got me off ZDL, just couldn't deny the greatly increased flexibility. Probably going to be using this for a decade or more -- thanks much!

Ah, I see. Keeping it more vanilla is my pref for sure, but that doesn't mean you should hop to do it. :) For now I am good with the prior MBF21 version which at least doesn't have the changed spectre. Either way, thanks for the mod(s)!

Uh-oh, that instantly made me think "user error" and yeah, it is partially error on my part. I set up a fresh GZDoom and installed only the three dD pk3 files, the dD SBrightmaps.p3k, and DarkDoomZ (for easy brightmap testing). Used start of E1M1. Result: no flashing barrel. Something in my main setup must be messing with dD because I don't get the flashing barrel now. However, the barrel has no visible brightmap at all. And neither does the nearby armor bonus. The only visible brightmaps at E1M1 start are the computer panels in the ceiling above blue carpet. Is that how it is intended? dD comes with weapon brightmaps also. However, about half seem kinda messed up? Pistol's brightmap looks cut off horizontally, plasma gun is just fullbright, and BFG has no brightmap at all... Here is dD + dD's SBrightmaps.pk3 vs. dD + my pistol patch above from Smooth Doom: Brightmapped Edition by KVELLER. It's subjective, but I feel the patched version looks a lot nicer. ...Buuuuuut that's about all I can report because I am going crazy here. When I run fresh GDZoom + just Smooth Doom: Brightmapped Edition by KVELLER the pistol brightmap looks exactly like it does in dD, cut off horizontally. The lovely SD:BE plasma gun brightmap I can view in SLADE does not render in-game, and barrels and armor bonuses don't work, either. Assuming the brightmaps in Smooth Doom: Brightmapped Edition aren't buggy I have no idea why I'm seeing these issues on a fresh portable install. I will report back if I figure any causes out. Sorry I can't be more helpful here / might be reporting phantom problems.

Thanks for the mod. Always nice to have more options to un-genericize monster sounds. I find it a little confusing though; it seems only GZDoom has a non-special-monsters version? MBF21 only seems available with the new monster sprites?

I've had some messed up sprite brightmaps for a while, and tracked it to dD-SmoothDoom-default.pk3. Notably the barrel, which flashes, and the weapons. I managed to brute force a little patch, using resources from Smooth Doom: Brightmapped Edition by KVELLER (full credits in the zip). Load it after dD-SmoothDoom-default.pk3, to fix the barrel. dD-SmoothDoom-default-BMfix-barrel.zip Also tried to fix the weapons. The pistol brightmap is much improved, harder to say about the rest. (The plasma gun is still fullbright, couldn't figure out why.) I left out the BFG entirely as I couldn't make any headway, that requires the most painstaking alignment fixes. Anyway, fixed pistol at least: dD-SmoothDoom-default-BMfix-barrel+some_weaps.zip Both are tested in Doom + Doom II.

Yeah I just had a not-great experience with it too. Frames often skipped and I felt movement and mouse were laggy. In addition the command line seems super undocumented (I ended up peeking into the source code to find details) and even though it's supposedly present, I couldn't make the -iwad command do anything. When set to fullscreen at less-than-desktop res the game doesn't scale to fill the screen, instead rendering in the lower-left corner. I suspected the recent move to SDL3 was responsible for at least some of these issues. Anyway, matters improved when I used Nvidia Profile Inspector to disable GSync for the EX+ .exe, which resolved the juddery framerate -- I saw I had done that for OG EX in the past as well. And maybe I got used to EX+ keyboard and mouse response as it still seems less than snappy but I can live with it at least. At first I could only solve the fullscreen scaling problem by falling back to SDL2-based version 3.6.5.9. That one lets me play at 640x480 fullscreen with no problem (though 320x240 still fails to scale like in the SDL3 version). Then I tried the (phenomenal, well worth buying) utility app Lossless Scaling, and that allowed me to scale SDL3 320x240 windowed mode to fill the screen at the possible expense of added latency. Wish I had the means to objectively test mouse lag on SDL2 640x480 native fullscreen vs. Lossless Scaling SDL3 window -> fullscreen. Anyway, that's enough noodling around with this for today.

Hopefully! Tbh I have been surprised that this hasn't occurred more commonly with GZDoom, as it's pretty typical for mod communities with access to source code for their old games to be slinging fancy shaders around. Maybe there are some GZD limitations I'm not aware of that make it more challenging. Edit: Btw something along these lines I've had an eye on is the Doom Liquid textures pack. The footage its creator is posting to socials is impressive.

Yeah, you explained that limitation earlier in the thread. What I'm curious about is if the colored blood (that spawns the more spectacular arcing entities) is supposed to disappear almost immediately? It's like, in 5-10 frames at most. Doesn't come close to falling to the ground like it would in unmodified Woof!/Nugget/Cherry. (I can record a gif/video if that sounds weird.) I look forward to seeing what you might choose to implement! The fact that this is all based on (essentially) DeHackEd blows my mind.

Hmm, I'm in the Lost Souls shouldn't bleed camp so that wouldn't affect my feeling really. Perhaps more importantly, I find special blood colors in general aren't very apparent when using Smooth Doom MBF21. For example in Woof!: When I shoot a Caco or Hell Knight I see just a brief flash of the special blood color (blue or green, here) but it quickly disappears a few frames after spawning, before it can fall to the ground. When I run Woof! without any mods all blood, colored or not, falls to the ground like in DOS. Does MBF21 have the default dinky blood fx quickly despawning by design? Since the (lovely) MBF21 fountains can't be anything but red, it makes the special-colored blood that is present fairly unnoticeable except in xdeath events, when it geysers around real nice. Regarding Lost Souls, MBF21's sparks implemented a la Smooth Bolognese would by by far the most visually pleasing to me, but bullet puffs a la Crispy would also satisfy "Lost Souls shouldn't bleed" idea.

This is a really good SmoothDoom + gore all-in-one solution, thank you. One small thing I've been wondering, is the Lost Souls' light source meant to cycle between on/visible and then completely off, back and forth? This flashing looks odd so I thought it might be a bug. If so, alternating between a higher brightness state and a lower-brightness-but-not-zero state might look less jarring, imo.

Yeah, this mod is such a blessing for my vanilla+ config, which is what I play 99% of the time. Thank you to Alaux. It's surprising to me how good some of the effects can look with just the MBF21 features. The smoothly animated sparks and explosion "ashes" (?) look particularly great at low-res 320x200, very satisfying pixel carnage. I have just one aesthetic suggestion... I think it'd be nicer if the Lost Souls did something other than bleed. Those beautiful sparks (presumably from bullets impacting their skulls) would be top-tier imo (Smooth Bolognese does this in GZDoom), but Crispy Doom's use of bullet puffs is reasonable too, if less pretty.

Cool, thanks for clarifying. While my anal retentive side would enjoy having a stripped-down version, in reality it seems like your mod is a superset of Perk's, so yours is the only one needed for now.

Cool project, look forward to trying the PC version. I'm curious why many sounds are replicated from the vanilla game though? Are they Perk's high-quality versions (or similar)?