MrFlibble

7 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Level progression is weird and what to do is not always very clear. Got to a bit in the first map where I came to a chest, it said I could not afford to open it, went up an elevator next to said chest, fought some bad guys, came to a locked door that would not open. Looked around for a hidden switch, something, anything, back tracked to see if a new path opened up, could not find anything, came back, tried the chest on a whim, it opened and... so did the door? I am sorry but I just do not follow the logic in that. The helpers are a bit weird. The wizard teleporting right on top of you at random is kind of disconcerting, as are they knights you free from the walls because when they do not have a target they come back to you - and raise their weapon! I shot one of them on instinct. I then went up this elevator, blew a path through to the citadel, then was beset upon by an assload of bad guys.

I played this for the first time today. The chest/elevator part got me puzzled for the first time -- I actually thought the number represented the souls you needed to collect -- then figured out it was gold. Maybe the phrasing of "You cannot afford it" is intended to hint that this is about the gold you collect.

Other than I want to emphasise that everything is designed to introduce the player to the mechanics very smoothly. Just don't forget to press G to view the tips, they're very helpful!

Nice, but I get the feeling that the mascaron itself is much sharper than the rock/marble texture that surrounds it, resulting in an odd effect. Maybe it's not noticeable in-game though.

Earlier I watched Civvie's playthrough/review of a beta release, all looks rather nice but is there/will there be an option to turn off ludicrous amounts of ketchup on the screen?

You can always try the shareware version of Heretic and the Hexen demo first before buying the respective games.

Personally I liked most the second and the third hubs in Hexen, while the first hub (shown in the demo) was pretty tepid to me. But you'll get a good idea of how these games play and feel to you. (Heretic shareware has an entire episode so go for it.)

This:

2 hours ago, M_W said:

Doesn't chocolate doom use a similar OPL emulation to DOSBox?

Maybe. I hear that some of the DOSBox forks replace vanilla DB code in that area with something more accurate, but that might be outdated or plain wrong info. Anyway, that was just an example -- the idea is that DOSBox is resource hungry because it emulates an entire PC while ports run natively (sorry for being Captain Obvious!).

On 9/16/2020 at 12:25 AM, Cacowad said:

I do plan to merge in the "experimental" branch soon

BTW, what happened to @Wereknight's Skullflare replacement that was repurposed as the Gargoyle sprite sheet? If I remember correctly he pulled out (some of) his art made for Freed∞m when he moved over to The People's Doom development (but some of his props are still used in FD I think). Would be a shame to lose that work because it's pretty cool and shouldn't clash with either the theme or other assets in Blasphemer.

15 hours ago, M_W said:

I had a DOSBox frontend with everything set up, once upon a time, but image scaling was worse, audio was worse, and input lag was worse.

This are getting improved, gradually, and in the end DOSBox or its forks are likely to produce the best emulation of period hardware there is.

But of course, when applied to Doom it is likely more effective to port parts of DOSBox code like OPL emulation into existing ports, rather than go with DOSBox which still needs to emulate an entire PC.

That said, a while ago I played a lot of Freed∞m in DOSBox with MBF, for a kind of nostalgia's sake, and it was pretty fine performance-wise. I used DOSBox SVN Daum which arguably has a decent bilinear filtering mode with ddraw compared to the vanilla DOSBox scaling methods.

On 9/15/2020 at 5:27 AM, Scuba Steve said:

Part of the accuracy in upscaling Doom's textures is the noise. Some upscales are simply too... flawless? and fail to mimic the low-fi, scanned-photograph appearance of the classic textures. There's a delicate balance to high resolution Doom art; if it's too clean, the aesthetic of the game changes and it no longer feels like Doom.

I'd say this is more of a general issue within the Single Image Super-Resolution problem. Basically, whenever a digital image gets scaled down, some part of information/detail is irrevocably lost. However the human eye/mind can still guess certain details from just a handful of pixels on the low-res image. Conversely, the neural networks that are built to restore images to the original/higher resolution still mostly rely on very basic processing of the input data, and either have to add quasi-random noise to make the output more close to the originals, or simply fail to make proper sense of the low-res parts. This is where the washed-out, clean upscales come from.

I believe that networks which have a semantic component to them may fare better, at least theoretically. That is, they identify parts of the image first as meaningful objects, and then process these parts according to which objects they recognise. I think Google has some AI setups which are capable of that (IIRC this is how they produced hallucinated images). But to the best of my knowledge, ESRGAN doesn't.

But even if networks have this semantic ability, when applied to video game content this is compounded by the fact that such material often contains imaginary objects that have no counterparts in real life. Remember how that face upscaling network mistook a character's cape of the cloak for red hair? This is because that particular AI was not trained to "see" anything but hair on people's heads. Similarly, such AIs are likely to fail on video game graphics unless you specifically train them to recognise imps, gargoyles and stuff like that -- again, more complicated than it is with real-life objects because there are as many different gargoyles as there are artists who draw them.

Apologies for jumping into this thread like this, but I just found an interesting ESRGAN model called lollypop (you can get it here) that produces some quite interesting results with textures. I ran a sample of Doom II wall textures for a test (they've not been checked for tiling), then palettised with mtPaint and scaled back to 2x the original size using nearest neighbour:

I'd say these are much better results than I would get with earlier models that try to imitate "realistic" textures, although they're admittedly not perfect. The model also tends to make colours a bit darker.

I've no idea what they look like in-game though.

Let's not forget that certain DOSBox forks allow you to play around with various shaders like those imitating a CRT screen (with a varying degree of accuracy).

I haven't posted here in a while but I've been experimenting with ESRGAN intermittently. The models get better and better, recently I tried out one called Rebout Blend by LyonHrt (available here) which was specifically trained to upscale character sprites and it produces some very good results.

Here's a small test I just ran with some Dark Forces character sprites:

This is already palettised, scaled down to 2x (the model upscales to 4x the original size) and with the mask applied. No pre-processing was required. Here's the 4x image the model originally produced:

Original sprites:

Spice Opera is awesome.

I watched the miniseries a while ago and I don't remember exactly, but didn't they also have that kind of vaguely "exotic" music with little character, like in the trailer?

I only remember the Inama Nushif song from the Children miniseries.

The visuals in the trailer are nice overall. I don't nurture any expectations but this might be a good movie after all. I just don't get it why they made Paul scream during the gom jabbar test, it is contrary to the description in the book and does not reinforce his image as a strong character. I know it's not easy to depict intense pain if you're not really shown what is causing it and the sufferer conceals the signs, but at least Lynch's film shows through the box what Paul felt (i.e. that his hand was being scorched).

Certainly do read the first book, it's very good prose and the story is solid. Messiah and Children are dragged out a bit, and the God Emperor is more contemplative with a very deep running plot and very little action on the surface. Leto II is still a very powerful and interesting character, but I do know some people don't like the pacing and the tangled but rather static conflict. The last two books are interesting as well but depict a completely different world, in a way.

If your hypothetical Doom II '96 were still to be based on the Doom engine, I'd venture it would have had features you can see in Hexen and Strife, possibly including ambient sounds, horizontal-moving sectors, earthquakes and slippery floors, a hub level system, possible NPCs and dialogue, player inventory, selectable player characters etc. As a matter of fact, quite a lot could have been done to add more depth to the original Doom formula while staying close to the core gameplay mechanics. It would still be considerably different from the classic Build engine games I guess. Also it would look dated, no matter what you do.

You can also look at HacX as another, simpler possibility -- no extra engine features but feels like a mix between Duke3D and (somewhat) Quake design-wise.

Practice makes perfect. No one will ever reproach you for imperfect command of a second language, and as long as your message is clear and the slips don't obscruct understanding, it's perfectly fine. The more you chat (ain't much difference if this is spoken or written in forums or the like), the better you'll get at it. What's important that once communication goes both ways (so address others and get replies) the brain starts auto-adjusting to feedback and accelerates learning of how to use the language as a means of communication (as opposed to, a set of rules that must be followed).

Also the written medium (such as forum posts) has the advantage of time being on your side, i.e. you can re-read before posting and polish it a bit.

Cool, thanks for finding this out! It did not occur to me that for the purposes of a movie, it did not have to actually be a playable game at all, just a sequence that looks like the character is playing one.

On a side note, a I remember reading a TVTropes (I think) article about how video games were represented in various media. This features (for some reason) real-life games being played on consoles for which they were not actually released, actors holding the gamepad upside down (while being presented as a gaming pro in the scene) and other hilarious stuff of this kind. Might have been this article, or another being linked to from that page, but not sure.

43 minutes ago, Hellektronic said:

I'd love to learn to read the cyrillic alphabet, and thus Russian writing.

The alphabet itself shouldn't be too hard, although I heard some people who are used to the Latin script find it a bit confusing that so many upper- and lowercase letter pairs in Cyrillic are too similar in appearance between each other when compared with Latin. E.g. T/t but Т/т in Cyrillic.

But there's a whole different layer to this because Russian orthography (like many others actually) does not reflect positional changes of sounds, including vowel reduction, consonant devoicing (this one could be unusual for English speakers) and regressive assimilation, so you might still find it not easy to match what you hear in the lyrics with their written representation.

Good question! Here's the clip from the film:

A good view of the game screen is at 0:41.

I have no idea what it is but it looks like it could be something like a tech demo of the Doom3 engine. Perhaps something created with an FPS maker, since I doubt the studio would invest much in creating a custom video game for a scene that lasts less than a minute.

23 hours ago, Halfblind said:

Wolf4SDL - While using the SDL code base, and allowing modders to create entirely new games, it still attempts to emulate the original vanilla experience. Many mods include new features such as the ability to look up and down.

AFAIK Wolf4SDL is pretty accurate to the original experience, except it does not seem to support aspect ratio correction, unlike ECWolf. You only get the proportions right on a 4:3 display if you still have one.

Excellent work as usual, I love the art style.

I remembered a few more findings of this kind. When the forums at RGB Classic Games were active we made some pretty interesting discoveries, but now the forums are down sadly, and only some stuff is preserved by the Wayback Machine:

Some missing game versions

Notable game findings with Hallfiry's coverdisk catalogue

In addition to the Heretic and Hexen betas that you all probably know about, there's a beta demo of Blood with I believe three levels, version 0.91. It was found by Litude on the PC Gamer CD-ROM (Disc 3.2) (May 1997) coverdisk. No idea about the differences there though.

There are several early demo versions of Chasm: The Rift (some contain the subtitle The Shadow Zone instead of The Rift), a few can be found here.

A while ago I also found a beta demo of Descent II which is slightly earlier than the regular demo of the same game. I did not look closely into it (it would crash soon after start, perhaps intentionally), but the demo was obviously leaked judging by the documentation. The regular demo of the game is pre-release as well, and the differences are documented at TCRF.

One CGW magazine coverdisk had a playable pre-release demo of Descent to Undermountain which was then reproduced by other magazines. Interplay apparently intended to release a more up-to-date demo but this never happened.

There are several development builds of the DOS port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo. The content is the same as in the final demo, namely you can play as Ryu or Chun Li (in three versions each) on Zangief's stage. The MIDI music is missing and there seem to be other differences but I'm not familiar enough with the game to tell more. The entire thing is not very interesting overall because this is a PC conversion of a released arcade game, so any huge pre-release features that were cut or changed drastically are unlikely.

UPD: I just checked Hallfiry's catalogue again and it seems that the absence of MIDI music in the early SSF2T demos is explained by the fact that these were the CD version demos. One coverdisk has WAV tracks on it for the demo, presumably they were supposed to be burned on the CD as CD Audio but the editors did not or could not do it.

Three early demos of In Pursuit of Greed are known, with some noticeable differences from the final release, and between each other as well.

There's a CD demo of Eradicator that comes with a trailer (not seen elsewhere I believe), but otherwise the same as the first Internet demo v1.02. This one does have some differences from the final version too, notably Kamchak's and Eleena's slot 2 weapon projectiles are swapped, plus some other things here and there.

BTW, did you know that the demo of Entomorph is for DOS, while the full game only had a Windows release?

2 hours ago, Wadmodder RiderPùdu said:

Another gaming lost media I'm interested in are early pre-release builds of PC games sent to some PC gaming magazines during the 1990s. Back between the early to late 1990s, many PC gaming magazines would preview pre-release builds for review and possibly feedback to a developer or publisher on improving the game. You can see many of these screenshots on Internet Archive's magazine archive or on other magazine archival websites. Sadly, only a few of these builds would ever see the light of day, while others still haven't been released at all.

Sometimes magazine editorial staff would include a beta by mistake on their coverdisks, which is how some actual pre-release builds got leaked. IIRC one the most well-known leaks of this kind was the Warcraft II Magazine Preview Alpha. But that one was a demo with four missions specifically created for the preview.

More recently, thanks to Hallfiry's magazine coverdisk catalogue I found a beta version of Steel Panthers (a WWII tank wargame by SSI). Unlike pre-release demos by SSI, this has lots of missions and features, and was most likely not intended to be made public.

A different German magazine coverdisk (PC Power No. 8-9/95) has what appears to be a development build of FX Fighter, again mistaken for a demo by the editors, apparently.

Oh, and Hallfiry also found a playable beta of Tomb Raider (DOS version) on yet another coverdisk. Really unpolished, and with lots of self-running demos (as opposed to about three -- I don't remember exactly -- in the final version; maybe just one). It does not support high resolution modes. Again, it was likely included by mistake, because there are data files for all levels, although the demo might be limited to only some.

These pre-release press betas sometimes have a limit on how many levels you can play, but include data for all levels. There's one beta/demo of Panzer General which is like that, it has all maps but you can only play two I think.

2 hours ago, Wadmodder RiderPùdu said:

Duke Nukem 3D 0.99 Beta (early 1996)

Numerous Shadow Warrior (classic) Builds (1993-1997)

IIRC, both Duke3D beta 0.99 and SW beta 0.90 were leaked. In at least one instance, a computer from 3D Realms was sent to the tech service which leaked the beta (I think it was Duke3D, maybe both). The others were made public after the Duke4.net team had a go at the 3DR archives and the SW betas became available with permission from franchise owners. I don't think any of these ever went to magazines for preview, mags usually received screenshots and press releases for early previews, and were granted access to a close-to-release version for reviewing purposes later in the development cycle.

There's also a leaked alpha of Blood, including the source code. I don't remember the details of this leak though. There used to be a site documenting these but it's now gone.

TBH the current one ain't bad either, but the old tune gives me a nostalgic mood.

The first version of FD that I had was 0.7, so it was sometime in 2012. I'll be honest, I was rather sceptical about the art back then too (before I actually played) but I was on the hunt for all kinds of FOSS remakes of commercial games and FD was the prime example. I played a lot of vanilla PWADs that aimed to recreate the original feel of Doom levels, including Simply Phobos, the CH Retro Episode and Planet Phobos, as well as NJDoom and NMD, with Phase 1 and MBF in DOSBox.

Back then I mostly preferred vanilla PWADs to the original FD levels because in many places, I felt there was a clash between the art style/quality and the advanced BOOM features introduced in some levels like the underwater section in E1M3 (IIRC), conveyor belts and the like, which would be more appropriate in something akin to Duke Nukem 3D. The levels also had very little in terms of Doom style secret areas. But I still played through almost the entirety of the FD shareware episode.

I also like the tune that was playing in E1M2 in versions up to 0.10 or so. Feeling pretty nostalgic about the old versions of Freed∞m generally.

The old, pre-Raymoohawk releases were criticised by many for bad art quality, but actually I think the visuals are pretty consistent, at least in Phase 1.