Optimus

Super-FX is a 16bit processor. Quite more the pain to do accurate fixed point arithmetic (which I assume Doom on the Super-FX does too like the original Doom) than if you had 32bit regs. However, I have noticed this oddity of textures shifted at angles even in consoles with 32bit CPUs (unless it's an issue of their GPU hardware texture coords) like in the PS1. With the same number of bits, there are different ways to handle fixed point math, so that would explain the engines have a bit different implementation or maybe they reduced the trigonometric tables size to save some memory. But on Fast Doom PC if things are precise with present 32bit CPUs, I don't think there is any performance gain by lowering the precision. Unless there are some math tricks or something. But even then I guess it's going to be minimal and not worth it.

That's great, I will wait for the next version, curious to test it. What other projects are you planning to work on?

I am fine with old good Street Fighter 2 (and maybe some later iterations of it like Turbo) and old good Mortal Kombat 1,2,3,Ultimate, but some other later 3D fighters like Tekken, Virtua Fighter or others, I can't get into. Or I did play them and it was all button mashing and winning but didn't feel good. Soul Calibour seems like that too but at least I adore this one, the graphics, the ancient fighter themes, I loved it on my DreamCast. But it still for me the oldschool 2D even in their 3D iterrations might play better although I haven't checked the recent 3D SF or MKs. I am fine with the old classic ones.

It was during mid 90s. It's interesting to me when I first met wolfenstein and Doom, how my brain couldn't react to the 3D environment well and it didn't impress me, rather I was struggling to make sense of the graphics. Back then I was impressed by 2D games especially adventure games with finely pixeled graphics. In one case I visit a school friend's home to exchange some PC games, he shows me spear of destiny. It was that first map with some transparent vines. But it seemed to me like you were walking through them, so it seemed weird to me and didn't impress me. Then way way later in a party, someone shows me Doom in his 486 and points out how great shooting the bald shotgunners is because of the blood they spout. It also didn't impressed me but got the game somewhere anyway. Then installed it at some other point in my father's PC (I think it was a Cyrix 486 that I later got for myself when he bought a Pentium), and tried to adapt my brain and play, I would move in E1M1 upwards to the green armour over the stairs. I do remember that when I reached there, I rotated and shoot some guy down in the distance. And somehow I felt the depth there, that that guy was far away in the distance. But I don't know who he was, maybe the shotgunners hiding behind the pilars in Ultra Violence. Ah yeah, I remember, I selected UV because I thought this was a slider for the violence and didn't know it was for the difficulty. A bit later 97-98 I found out about the Doom WADs community from a magazine. It had a floppy with few WADs and editors, like Deu, Dmgraph, Dmaud, Dehacked. I started out of the blind to try to make maps, without knowing anything, figuring out things myself. We changed the audio which was easier. I did some UFO sprite for cacodemon which I lost unfortunatelly. I didn't have internet to download WADs. A bit later, I noticed a CD collection DeathDay, I bought it. Started playing a lot of random WAD. Later through my university internet, I started collecting them and playing the classics.

That's really cool, I recently tried the latest version. I see now that the mode13h version does a bit of difference even on my 386dx. I thought it wouldn't because of the CPU bottleneck on other things. In high detail (fullscreen minus status bar) for example, which is already choppy for 386 anyway, but I noticed slight difference. I haven't ran the whole benchmark yet, but just checked the fps counter on the starting E1M1 area before moving the player. It went 11.1fps from 9fps on original mode-x version. Also I was checking the different renderers (from 386sx to Pentium), they don't seem to make much difference. But maybe I should run them on a full benchmark. The pixel diff option described above, is it in this version or planned in the future? Is it default on mode13h or can one enable/disable it? I didn't saw it as an option. It's interesting, I would original thing doing extra checks to see if pixels are the same could take something away. But I guess in very fast PCs with slow ISA cards it could make a difference.

I finally got myself into playing King's Field 4 on my PS2. This was my first attempt to play these games and at first I found the controls awkward (rotating speed is slow no matter what, makes it hard to look around corners fast enough or do some extra checks behind walls for exploration/secrets) but later I got used to it and started playing. It grew up on me. It starts casually then the atmosphere, enemies and riddles and backstory gets better. There were few points I reached in the world that I was in awe and started to realize how the central spire in the ancient city interconnected with everything on four directions and three levels through bridges and how amazing the level design gets, let alone the atmosphere and music. It was somewhere there when I first found the ancient city that I had an appreciation about the game. Then later when I reached from the dark dungeons to the woods. I finally finished it and now I am making another playthrough/video capture on PCSX2. It's amazing and now I want to go back and play older King's Field on PS1 and also other From Softwater games of similar calibre. Also, I see most inspirations made it to DS2 specifically. There are things reminding me of DS1, but DS2 is mostly related. p.s. I also look on to play some other From Soft. I have Evergrace and Eternal Ring which I got cheaply. I will look for Shadow Tower next.

That's like a Euro sign EDIT: Almost.. €

It's up to someone's playstyle. I don't agree when people say "If you grab the SSG, what's the point of the Shotgun". I see people wasting SSG on simple human enemies. I like to switch between the two when possible. But sometimes you can't predict if the next room has individual human enemies at corners or tougher enemies, or combination of zombies, imps and demons. Sometimes it's a disadvantage because I enter a place, somehow decide to switch to simple shotgun, but that makes me too slow, and get blasted buy one shotgun guy. I was going to grab his shotgun anyway and was at 50 shells anyway before that simple shot. So, maybe it's exaggerated at times and will make you waste time (although the slow reloading SSG might also make you waste time in other cases). But anyway, it even feels good to switch from SSG shooting a demon, to SG shooting an imp, while strafing and avoiding everything. In the worse cases, if I single SG shoot an imp but it didn't die, I like to switch to my pistol and give the final shoot, but I don't do that always (Also thinking the Coincident fun Pew Pew :)

I used to not bother with secrets much, but now when I replay WADs even in my boring youtube channel, I'll be roaming around several minutes after I found the exit, even IDDT and IDCLIP to reduce the time taken, my videos are much longer. But I also want to find all the secrets not from a completionist perspective, but because I know I might have missed some nice looking side areas to a unique easter egg room I shouldn't have missed (I just love these). I don't usually care about items or enemies, but there are cases where I am at the end of the level, found all secrets, but for some reason enemies or items are still not there. I have to doublecheck now, because in few cases, item/enemies are not complete, because I really did miss an area. Sometimes it's an area accessed from a secret that I've missed, other times a regular room I didn't open the door to explore. So I am missing interesting rooms I wanted to explore. So, even if one removed secret tags, I would still want to be sure I didn't miss everything and actually it would make it harder to know if I missed things. Also reason I don't like when a map closes your path behind you and you can never return. Then I have to IDCLIP and buy buy immersion for anyone watching my playthroughs (I know they are boring anyways). That makes me curious about good secret design and if there could be extra helpers/hints when you reach the end to lead you to the missing secrets. From always giving an automap (but some people like to hide those linedefs even with automap on) to some extra hints maybe or alert if you are nearby secret (but then there are secrets where the trigger to open it is in the other side of the map).

Part of conversation with chatGPT. It could tell me the real theme of Kama Sutra MAP30. Then it decided a very funny name and that "DoomCute" is the mascot character of this wad.

Here is another one I just found That actually makes sense. Initially I was like "No, it's holding one gun and his other hand is grabbed by the demon". But I have forgotten, the exact same marine with the same pose and different background, holding also a shotgun is actually the title menu. So it's two images that are similar in pose, in one it's true, the other not. Haven't found any mandela effect to convince me. I was hoping for something I am very familiar with, to shock my brain. But even Doom, most of them are like "yeah, I remember that could be a ceiling but it could also not be, it's higher up it makes sense to be a ceiling but I don't know for sure". The gun thing was cool though. Somehow I entered the Doom menu and never noticed the marine pose is the same as the box, I haven't connected the dots. I was just looking at menu options or jumping forward into the game without noticing too much. At one point I was like, "wait was there a marine in the title menu? I thought it was just hellish background and the menu". Your mind plays tricks.

I don't know my Doom history well, specifically knowing about which authors did what. I can absolutely remember obscure maps from certain megawads but not knowing who did them. If you asked my favorite mappers, I would have a hard time to instantly think of many, cause I forget those details. For example, you say Alien Vendetta map 11 above, and I instantly jump "YES! That epic map with the huge marble temple on top of rocky mountains!!!" But who did that? I need to check the doom wiki right now. Yesterday I finished a relatively unknown megawad that I liked, called Echelon. I see the name of the author and I am like "sounds familiar" but let's see doom wiki what else he did. And I was like, wow! Some of my favorite maps in Eternal Doom, and Master Levels. I instantly know these maps are by the titles and number slot. But without checking wiki I wouldn't have known who did what. And then I forget. I like listening to episodes of An Evening with Nirvana, but maybe 10-20% of the names are familiar. I need to refresh my doom history..

First impression tells me this is slaughtermap. - big symmetric bland arenas - hard monsters stacked in NxN squares looking away from you, till you wake everything up. - lot's of powerups everywhere

I used to argue about games pretending to be "retro" while they are developed in something like Unity Engine and intentionally downgrade their graphics. But you've gone further. To be honest, for being truly retro it doesn't matter if something is developed with old or new tools, as long as it runs on the original hardware. You talk about the old times where devs were writing a game in the original machine with old tools, but even then some devs created their own tools that were better and more modern than what was already there, and spread the tools for others to use. Much later, crossdev on retro coding became more common, like if you are developing for an 8bit/16bit computer, but you compile everything on PC, test on emulator, but occasionally transfer to the real machine to make sure nothing is broken. There were few people who were swearing coding only on the real machine (try to write code in an editor on retro computer, ahhh the horrors!), I must have tried it once back in time on Amstrad CPC. There were some nice assemblers but if there was a bug in the code and crashed, you had to reload the assembler and your code from floppy. Not anymore, but blows my mind people used several years ago to code games and finish things in tight deadlines on the original tools. Some game companies though would have crossdev tools running on some more powerful machine even back then. It was retro even for then to prefer better more modern tools. The only non-retro is when one pretends to be retro but needs a beefy PC running a modern 3D engine for a wolfenstein clone.

I just realized Duke Nukem 3D music is better than Doom. It's underappreciated. It has more atmosphere.

I thought DBP11: Lilywhite Lilith was pretty beautiful and stand out to me from the rest DBPs.

Yes, I usually just make a map and never even think about the music side of things, don't know how to write music for Doom and neither bother to specify one. Just pop in there whatever you seem fit.

I should do something this time too, it was fun the last two times! Thinking of trying something new, maybe something with ZDoom features (but not go too gimmicky with them). Count me in!

The Icon of Sin.

Just finished with my map Zolita Fields for Doomworld Project 2022. I am generally happy how some of the shadow/lighting and the atmosphere certain areas turned out to have, even though I struggled making things right.

I finally just finished mine, close before my xmas holidays. I went too far with details this time so it exceeds the limits for vanilla (which would be original goal) and no way to fix this, so it needs limit removing (as tested with Crispy Doom and GZDoom). Name: Zolita Fields Author: Optimus Format: Limit Removing Multiplayer support: No Difficulty settings: Yes Jumping: No Crouching: No Freelook: Not necessary Tested in: Crispy Doom, GZDoom zolita_fields.zip

Back when I was 16 and started learning DEU, I made one or two silly maps, then I started already dreaming of my first Doom 1 project episode with 9 maps, with realistic maps and the end of a level will be the beginning of next in visual context. I was dreaming about it, maybe tried to make a map and burned by visplane overflow. Much later I wanted to revisit it, I did few lame Doom 2 maps. Anyway,. I am 42 years old and still haven't made my single episode (that's a lie, I made one or two episode 1 joke wads), let alone megawad. It's too much for a single person although there are exceptions, but most will be happy to contribute in a community project.

I finished making videos of playthrough with all maps except the ones needed eternity and smack my marine. I just downloaded Eternity Engine 4.02.00 but when I load this wad (with -file) It takes too long to load and somewhere at 80% seems to be stuck for ever and I have to close the engine. Am I using the wrong version? The engine loads normally with Doom 2 wad.

It failed in GZDoom for me. I also remember other WADs with that effect that sometimes work and sometimes fail. But could be other 3D accelerated ports also as they don't use visplanes like the software rendering. The effect is based on missing textures and bleeding floor filling over visplanes. GPU based ports like GZDoom or possibly others don't use visplanes so they have to kinda predict it. Recently I tried to implement it in my wad for Maximum Doomworld project 2021, Valmanic Dreams And initially I was testing on GZDoom and had to move or flip linedefs in certain ways to make it work (but to be honest, I still don't know completely the mechanics, so I would try random things till I get it). Then I realized it broke on vanilla Doom, so I tried to make it work in vanilla. Then I broke it again in GZDoom, and vice versa, I was trying different things till I got it working on both. But too much trial and error and not enough knowledge of how to do it right. The final version works on everything I tested thought, from vanilla and chocolate to GZDoom. Although there is still a bit of difference of how sprites are clipped against the water when they die.

I do agree sometimes too much detail can be information overflow, but it depends. Some maps with details might still have some simple minimalistic surfaces with little extra details here and there but in a way that are distinctive to the eye, you teleport in that area and it looks gorgeous but also you can instantly have a sense of space to know where to navigate and where to position yourself against the enemies. While I remember other wads that are so drowned into detail, and usually the fault might also be the texture and lighting usage, that it's so hard to distinguish what is what when you have to act fast. Meanwhile I can think of wads that are so empty, but they use such texture combinations and great lighting that are both distinctive and with great atmosphere. Then maybe one can add little details with different colored textures for lights, pillars, consoles but in a way that they are distinctive from the smooth textured walls for example, and they don't clash visually with each other. I just love minimalistic stuff right now that still capture the simplicity and atmosphere and so I prefer to revisit some 90s WADs