GL ports question

I really like Jdoom - one of my favorite ports but the GL ports seem to have limitations that the original game didn't. For instance...
Invisible lines. Can't put them in the game (in the playing area anyway). If you do it won't render right. You also get HOM's.
Or they insist on putting textures on them.
I found that with the original doom2.exe I could create a deepwater effect using invisible lines but the gl ports would not render it properly. Same with placing an unattached line in front of a wall for a picture. Wouldn't do it. So I made the changes because I want my Descent project - http://www.doomwadstation.suhost.com/descent/descent.html to be compatible with everything if I can do it. Thats why I pulled Bloodworks http://www.doomwadstation.suhost.com/descent/bloodworks.html from the project and released it separately.
So, is there any way to get them to do this stuff properly or is that just the way it is?

Brad_tilf said:

Same with placing an unattached line in front of a wall for a picture. Wouldn't do it.

Yeah, I thought that was a GL problem too. When timmie started coding the new ZdoomGL I asked about that, and he had it sorted very quickly, so that one at least is possible.

I want it to work with ALL ports tho so I had to give up on that idea - for now - but this other mapper and I had an idea - what if you created a small 16/64 texture that was transparent to put on those lines. That might fix the problem there. Not sure if that would help with deep water tho, or even with any other time you might need an invisible line but he's doing a bridge that the gl ports don't like so he's going to give it a shot.

I know that in Edge it's possible to have single linedefs in a map: in fact it's required for some of the Edge linedef specials(like making a ladder for example where you have to place a single linedef with a special tag)

I assume you've tried using the GLbsp on your maps, right? Don't know if that helps or not...

Well, it certainly didn't help with Bloodworks but it might on this, you never know. I'll give it a shot the next time I run into a problem and see if it fixes it but my experience tells me that glbsp doesn't do as good a job as some of the regular bsp programs.
Currently, my bsp program of choice is bsp23x but it used to be zennode. Zennode doesn't do as good a job tho with 3d effects so bsp23x it is. If you know of a better one, I'd be more than happy to try it.
:-)

If you use invisible sector tricks in your levels you will most likely have problems with almost any GL port. The least problematic in this regard seems to be PrBoom but it has several other problems instead of that. To make it short: No GL port out there is really capable of rendering these correctly, especially those which rely solely on GL nodes (which IMHO as a programmer) are not nearly as neat as many people claim them to be. Doom with hardware accelerated rendering will be mostly for people who don't mind messing around with the maps to get it displayed properly. Many levels require some additional work to get rid of visual anomalies and some will never work correctly.
The sad thing is, if all mappers would use Boom effects to achieve their visual tricks (and if all source ports would support it properly) this entire mess wouldn't exist.

well, I did make that translucent texture and it worked like a charm.
Check out my post in the editing section to read more.
its called simply - a solution.

jdoom i don't like. it is very unstable and only looks good. i think it has the least features of all the ports, i know it lacks a number of common boom features. anyway zdoomgl and legacy are the 2 choices u got now.

ummm - as I said before. I want it to work with all ports so I am making the map to meet that specification. I have accomplished a couple of different things tho which with a little work have worked ok - stairs - which are beautiful



also a 3d bridge which looks really nice


but don't look underneath it. :-)
if you look at it from an equal height (as in the picture) it looks awesome.
If you look straight down (beneath the bridge) you can see where the gl port is having a problem with it. But, I placed that floor WAY down so there really isn't a need to look down there anyway.
It does look sweet.
:-)

On the non-gl side of the coin - vanilla doom2.exe handles both of these flawlessly.
:-)

Now for the weird part of the gl side - I run this through bsp23x and the bridge is wierd (as described above) and the stairs are perfect. My friend runs the same map through Zennode and the bridge is flawless in gl but the stairs are f'd up. Go figure. Doesn anybody know of a better bsp program cuz I'd like to get both perfect.
:-)

bah. I still prefer GL over software anyday. Runs better, and no pixels.

Ct_red_pants said:

bah. I still prefer GL over software anyday. Runs better, and no pixels.

I like the look of gl over software too but it makes it MUCH harder to do certain things. If you go to the descent3 page
http://www.doomwadstation.suhost.com/descent/descent3.html

you can see the same thing in opengl in Jdoom
I worked it so it looks good but it isn't the same.
I did like the way it came out tho

Brad_tilf said:

I like the look of gl over software too but it makes it MUCH harder to do certain things.

Only if you absolutely refuse to use Boom effects which would make all this invisible sector stuff really simple. I don't get it why some people stubbornly insist on mapping for the obsolete original Dos-EXE (who uses it anyway?) than to take advantage of all the new possibilities. It would make life much easier for almost everyone.
For conventional levels that isn't a problem but special effects and Doom2.exe's limited features just don't mix anymore. It is really frustrating to repeatedly find levels that won't work with OpenGL.

Graf Zahl said:

Only if you absolutely refuse to use Boom effects which would make all this invisible sector stuff really simple. I don't get it why some people stubbornly insist on mapping for the obsolete original Dos-EXE (who uses it anyway?) than to take advantage of all the new possibilities. It would make life much easier for almost everyone.
For conventional levels that isn't a problem but special effects and Doom2.exe's limited features just don't mix anymore. It is really frustrating to repeatedly find levels that won't work with OpenGL.

In case you missed the rest of the discussion on this - I AM making it compatible with the GL ports but to exclude people who still enjoy playing DOOM with the original EXE is ludicrous. Why should I as a mapper shun one sector of the community in favor of another.
I like GL but I also like original Doom2 and sometimes, especially playing older maps that were designed before the ports - I don't want to be able to cheat my way through the map by being able to go places I normally wouldn't.
So - to recap. I am making this megawad compatible with ALL ports and the original EXE. Why? Because I can. All I said was that the GL ports make it more difficult. In fact, it is harder to design for than the original exe and finally, if I design it with BOOM features then it won't be playable by ALL ports and the vanilla exe.

And jdoom don't support boom features, IIRC

Ya - that was what I said. I thought. /me scratches head.

I agree with Graf - either use BOOM features for "special efffects" (hence limit it to BOOM compat ports) or forget about trying to get it to work with ALL ports and stock DOOM. Even then, some things just can't be done - just the nature of GL vs original DOOM. So the only way to get it to work flawlessly with all ports is to tone down cool tricks:)

Btw, BOOMSDAY is a modification to JDOOM that supports BOOM stuff and is pretty damn good supporting stock "tricks". Probably the best GL port out there in terms of latter.

BSP23 shouldn't be used. At least use BSP5 with the flip linedef bug fixed. There is no single nodebuilder that suits ALL ports.

Oh, and GLBSP - be careful. On the prior version, be sure to delete unused sectors BEFORE you run it - haven't verified if new version has same problem. On the current version (2.0), be sure to read the docs very carefully - otherwise it will rebuild nodes using OLD information. Very bad default choice!