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Maes

Maes's EXTREME Final Doom Rage straight from 1996!

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myk said:

Doom IS a religion.


And apparently I was its prophet...if only I knew ;-)

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Maes said:

And apparently I was its prophet...if only I knew ;-)

Prophet of Doom - that'd make a good custom title. ;-)

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Mr. T said:
I bet they had fun reading that lol



Heh if I knew about 1337 speak back then, I'd probably shorten the letter to "H0w fuc|<1ng |)4r3 j00? DOOM s1 t3h p4wn 4dn t3h h4x j00 fux0rs I'm g0nn4 rijp j00r @$$ w1+|-| 4 r4z0r d1ld0!!1!!!111!!onehundredandeleven!!!11!".

It would have saved me and them some time, as well as making my point more powerful ;-)

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Maes said:

Heh if I knew about 1337 speak back then, I'd probably shorten the letter to "H0w fuc|<1ng |)4r3 j00? DOOM s1 t3h p4wn 4dn t3h h4x j00 fux0rs I'm g0nn4 rijp j00r @$$ w1+|-| 4 r4z0r d1ld0!!1!!!111!!onehundredandeleven!!!11!".

It would have saved me and them some time, as well as making my point more powerful ;-)


That's better :-P

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So true. This should be added to the DOOM bible or at least to a DOOM museum.

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The thing is that they were right to rate it less than the original, since it wasn't the original. Nothing new in the engine or its capabilities. Not even some new enemies and weapons, like at least Doom 2 had over Doom. It didn't even have the innovations brought to the engine by Heretic and Hexen. Of course, given the way it was developed, it wasn't going to have ACS, inventory, flight and freelook. But reviewers don't care about that, they care about the finished product, not how it was done. And they see that what's sold as a new game is in fact a couple of sets of maps for an old game.

It was an expansion pack sold as a new game. Like if GT and Id just grabbed some mods made by the community and sold them. Oh snap!

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I thoroughly enjoyed reading that. And it turns out you were right -- look at how big of a community the original DOOMs have today.

The last time I played Quake was years ago. I never finished Duke3D. None of these games hold a candle to the original DOOM.

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Take heart, mate. Let's face it, If PCM had published your letter they would have just given the usual purile games-mag-bitch-slap about how they're right and you're wrong. I've read enough of them in my time.

But, yeah, DOOM > Quake. Here we are, roughly 14 years after that letter was writtien and Doom still hasn't been killed off. Not even Doom 3 managed it.

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Abyssalstudios1 said:

Was there any sort of reply?


I'm sure they just threw it away after wiping their ass with it, since I didn't include stamps for returning it to the sender :-p

As I had stated in another thread, this letter was actually based on a less abrasive version, that was more "Doom vs Doom Clones" in tone, which I had written before that Final Doom review was published but never sent.

There was already an anti-Doom sentiment pervading the magazine (or at least the guy who regularly did the FPS reviews), who used no half-terms in crowning each and every new FPS "The new king" and "The Doom killer". E.g. the Dark Forces review terminated with the phrase "Doom is dead. Long live Dark Forces" -> HA HA HA HA HA !!!

The Final Doom review was pretty much the drop that made the glass overflow, and so I modified the original letter using no half terms on my side, either.

I think I had sent them another one, later on, which was even MORE abrasive but it complained about the state of PC gaming compared to its glory days in 1993-1995 ('tis was in late 1997-early 1998, exactly in the mid the dark transitional period for PCs between 1995-2000). I also sent another one, more carefully worded that got published after some censorship...yup, I had something to communicate ;-)

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Maes said:

E.g. the Dark Forces review terminated with the phrase "Doom is dead. Long live Dark Forces" -> HA HA HA HA HA !!!


I need to figure out who this guy is...

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lol that was amusing. I personally love Quake, but I keep it equal with DOOM in awesomeness. Something about Quake just draws me in, probably the more Gothic theme in it and slightly more modern weapons.

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PRIMEVAL said:

lol that was amusing. I personally love Quake, but I keep it equal with DOOM in awesomeness. Something about Quake just draws me in, probably the more Gothic theme in it and slightly more modern weapons.


IMO, the weapons in Quake are redundant (Shotgun, Super Shotgun! Nailgun, Super Nailgun! Grenade launcher, Rocket launcher!) and all the environments look like puke.

Not enough variety or inventiveness.

Also, to OP, yeah... the GOD metaphors were a little extreme.

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Maes said:

on my 486DX/40 while I still had 4 MB of RAM, that were lightning-fast, according to DOOM’s FPS meter (20-24 fps).


I'm sorry, but this made me laugh for a good minute. Ah, the old days when anything over 20 was amazing. Technology sure has gone crazy huh?

Amazing how everything is still a Doom clone. You can put better graphics on it. You can use higher detail models instead of sprites. You can spend millions of dollars on motion capture animations... and you're still a Doom clone.

Krispavera said:

Post of the Year Nominee 2010.


Seconded.

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eargosedown said:

I'm sorry, but this made me laugh for a good minute. Ah, the old days when anything over 20 was amazing. Technology sure has gone crazy huh?



Well, motion pictures are still 24 fps.

Exceeding the framerate of what can be actually displayed and/or perceived by the human eye is also pointless, and is only there for e-peen purposes or for technical considerations (e.g. interlacing in traditional 50/60 Hz, compatibility with mains frequency, increased picture stability in CRT monitors and high-end CRT TVs, or especially high refresh rates in some specialty LCD monitors). The currently mainstead TFT TN monitors would also look like crap if the frame rate was actually 24, 25 or 30 fps, because they need to buffer and oversample their input several frames ahead in order to drive their el-cheapo display.

Anything over 20-24 fps appears ultra-smooth, at least if you have progressive scan. With interlaced displays, you may want to double that. In particular TV screens are made from two partially overlapping fields, so in order to get smooth motion you need to render double the frames (50 instead of 25 for PAL, 60 instead of 30 for NTSC etc.)

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Maes said:

Exceeding the framerate of what can be actually perceived by the human eye is also pointless,


Clearly wrong. 35 to 60 Hz makes a big difference, and even 60 to 85 is clearly perceivable as an improvement. Even though the human eye supposedly cannot see the difference.

Maes said:

Exceeding the framerate of what can be actually displayed is also pointless,


Correct. This will only create screen tearing and create choppiness almost like having too low frame rates.

In general I believe that synchronizing with the monitor is the best option. Anything more is indeed just 'e-peen' as you so aptly put it. ;)

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Graf Zahl said:

Clearly wrong. 35 to 60 Hz makes a big difference, and even 60 to 85 is clearly perceivable as an improvement.


In what context? CRT stability? Of course. But in many contexts frame rate is not the same as refresh rate.

In motion that won't be even be physically rendered on the monitor? Clearly not.

In motion that might* be rendered, but won't be perceived as intended? Maybe, since the eye isn't a frame buffer indeed, but nothing major.

*That interlacing thing again. 50i != 50p, and 50i != 25p.

There are valid reasons to "put up" with overengineered frame rates, but they are more more technical and psychological than physiological.

There's however the experience of generalized signal processing: extreme framerates and resolutions can be seen as the equivalent of processing a human voice recording at a ridiculously high sampling rate, such as 192 KHz with 32-bit precision. While clearly pointless for normal listening and playback, it's advantageous to do any intermediate processing of any signal in the highest quality available, even if it will have to be degraded in order to be used.

You can view high framerates as a sort of "visual oversampling": since the eye doesn't sample discretely and instantly, there will be some continued perception of motion even beyond 25 fps, but not too much beyond.

The merits of "visual oversampling" are discussed in this research paper.

Just like any real signal, human vision is continuous but bandwidth limited, aka there's a maximum limit to the detail you can perceive in a given lapse of time.

What does this mean, practically? That if instead of 60 fps you were shown 24 carefully crafted fps (with processing and time shifts to account for your visions' limited bandwidth) you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Dropping frames like it happens on fixed-frequency media is however a far cry from those "idealized" 24 fps, and putting out 60 fps or more is an easier way to compensate, just like 192 KHz audio can compensate more easily and cheaply for recording/playback artifacts than a $1000000 CD player.

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#2 by HeliumPhoenix at January 6th, 2010

The real issue here isn’t framerates per-se….but motion-delta framerates. How ‘fast’ something is moving on the screen translates into so many pixels of distance between the same object on successively rendered frames. If the frame-rate of update is high enough (and the resolution sufficient)……or the motion is slow enough, then the number of pixels ‘jumped’ by an on-screen object that is moving will small enough that it becomes imperceptible as a ‘jump’……it looks smooth. But, when the object is moving faster than the screen can update for the same delta in screen-space, the jumps get bigger, and soon it becomes not only perceptible, but noticible and distracting.

Motion blur only obscures this.

The ‘framerate’ resolution of the eye is around 80-100 Hz for a stationary object. Beyond that, changes that are faster (like a flashing LED) no longer are perceptible as changing, and appear to be a continuous (if slightly dimmer than always-on).

Moving objects are more complex, as it also involves the resolving power of the human eye (max around 1 arc-second). So, if your monitors resolution (and your distance from it) make 1 pixel to be around 1 arc-second wide/tall, then for NO noticible motion artifacts, your framerate needs to be fast enough that no object shifts more than 1 pixel in any direction per frame.

Of course, you also have to concern yourself with LCD or CRT response times too, as most LCDs shift on/off much slower than the GtG times they like to advertise.

So, if your LCD has a 5ms GtG response time, it’s On/Off response time is probably around 7-8ms. Which means a max displayable frame rate of 160fps or so. Anything higher than that is invisible (your monitor simply can’t display the changes that fast.)

There are a LOT of factors that interact when it comes to perception limits. And different people have slightly better (or worse) limits perceptually as well. So, claiming that 30fps is better/worse than 60fps is somewhat nonsensical, without more information on the type of motion, resolution, distance, and speed on screen that are involved for a particular game…

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Gez said:

HeliumPhoenix's bunch of bullshit anal crap


Oh wow. 100 Hz eye perception? 160 Hz on a TFT? No comment. Let alone that marketing hype has reduced "response time" to pseudoscientific gimmicks just like those phoney 10000:1+ contrast ratios or those "100000 W PMPO MULTIMEDIA SPEAKERS"

If anything, consumer-grade TFT screens are not only locked to 60-75 Hz (at best), but they also suffer from effective input lag due to buffering, TN response time, motion compensation etc.

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