Early FPS Megathread: the kids need to learn about TekWar sooner or later

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Early FPS Megathread: the kids need to learn about TekWar sooner or later

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cool new Metroid game: Oct 7, 2009; hail satan

everyone knows the only video for doom you need is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJcf0aOwmiA

# ? Jan 24, 2016 23:17

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# ? May 31, 2024 20:48

laserghost: Feb 12, 2014; ^{trust me, I'm a cat.}

All I can say that I'm preparing a "newbie guide" to Doom for a gaming portal and I'm having hard time selecting subjects which could be appropiate to newcomers, and there's a lot of stuff to explain - why sourceports are a must, why there's a lot of 'em, that the whole game is highly configurable but certain options can significantly change the way it's played (mouselook and autoaim) etc. Maybe it's quite long, but I think that Doom deserves at least one feature-length documentary about it's history and design.

# ? Jan 24, 2016 23:25

cool new Metroid game: Oct 7, 2009; hail satan

my newcomer guide to doom is to drop doom.wad onto gzdoom.exe and then blow up the demons.

# ? Jan 24, 2016 23:29

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

laserghost posted:

Maybe it's quite long, but I think that Doom deserves at least one feature-length documentary about it's history and design.

You could do a hell of a lot better than Ahoy's video.

Also I'm really annoyed that Bloodstain has to be all like and suddenly slaughtermaps! right around map25. It seems like every single megawad that's not explicitly a slaughter wad must turn into a slaughter wad for the last five or six levels. Can we stop doing this? I absolutely hate newschool slaughter and I really would like to see more separation between oldschool wads and Sunder/Sunlust/slaughter poo poo.

Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jan 25, 2016

# ? Jan 24, 2016 23:29

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

laserghost posted:

All I can say that I'm preparing a "newbie guide" to Doom for a gaming portal and I'm having hard time selecting subjects which could be appropiate to newcomers, and there's a lot of stuff to explain - why sourceports are a must, why there's a lot of 'em, that the whole game is highly configurable but certain options can significantly change the way it's played (mouselook and autoaim) etc. Maybe it's quite long, but I think that Doom deserves at least one feature-length documentary about it's history and design.

why would new people to doom care even a little bit about convoluted sourceport history?

I like listening to people talk about level design in doom, I want to see / hear more of that (especially stuff like ling's doom 2 beastiary breakdown). but I've read masters of doom and can read the wiki for general factual nonsense.

Megadyptes posted:

everyone knows the only video for doom you need is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJcf0aOwmiA

crafty goddamn murder mutants

# ? Jan 25, 2016 00:33

Geight: Aug 7, 2010; Oh, All-Knowing One, behold me!

Yeah as far as sourceports go for newbies just say "zdoom is probably what you want" and then maybe zandorum if they want to do multiplayer stuff. Mention Chocolate Doom because it's awesome, but don't get into a whole history of source ports.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 00:48

Dominic White: Nov 1, 2005

Geight posted:

Yeah as far as sourceports go for newbies just say "zdoom is probably what you want" and then maybe zandorum if they want to do multiplayer stuff. Mention Chocolate Doom because it's awesome, but don't get into a whole history of source ports.

To be specific, whatever is the latest GZDoom (link to SVN page - it has the software renderer included, so it's best of all worlds) if you want singleplayer. Zandronum 2 if you want multiplayer. No servers are running Zandronum 3 yet which sucks, because it has nearly the same degree of mod compatibility as current GZDoom.

A newcomer isn't going to give even half a poo poo about absolute authenticity to a 199x DOS build so long as the game plays well and there's no obvious bugs.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 00:52

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

better yet don't link to gzdoom at all because opengl mode looks like poo poo, and the software renderer is where it's at.

so i guess you do need to talk about some sourceport stuff after all.

e:

do you want to play gameplay mods? zdoom / gzdoom

do you want to play multiplayer? zandronum / odamex

do you want to play regular old doom maps? prboom / chocodoom (maybe)

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:00

Karasu Tengu: Feb 16, 2011; Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

Probably most people playing Doom for the first time in 20 years will enjoy gzdoom/glboom more than zdoom or chocolate doom, since mouse look exists and won't make you sick.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:04

Lemon-Lime: Aug 6, 2009

The Kins posted:

XboxAhoy's analysis of the genre continues, and frankly, I might as well just replace the OP with this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4-SVUHQYI

So having watched it, it's a well-produced, surface-level canned history of the Doom series, but it's incredibly disappointing that it fails to bring up the existence of souce ports even in passing, or the fact that Doom still has an active modding community, and the only mod it talks about is Brutal Doom instead of all the better/more creative stuff out there.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:05

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

Elliotw2 posted:

Probably most people playing Doom for the first time in 20 years will enjoy gzdoom/glboom more than zdoom or chocolate doom, since mouse look exists and won't make you sick.

ZDoom mouselook is fine 99% of the time.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:08

Dominic White: Nov 1, 2005

Elliotw2 posted:

Probably most people playing Doom for the first time in 20 years will enjoy gzdoom/glboom more than zdoom or chocolate doom, since mouse look exists and won't make you sick.

Yep, this. ZDoom's half-mouselook is really weird and disconcerting to look at. OpenGL with texture filtering set to none (nearest/linear mipmap) and anisotropic filtering cranked will give you the best looking game running at 60fps, and also be the most accessible to newcomers. Chunky pixels intact, and there's even an Imitation Software lighting mode if you want to get as close to DOS as you can while still running on a modern engine.

The entire point of introducing the game to newcomers is to bring in some fresh blood to the scene, not throw them straight into the obsessive nitpicking of engine-purist grognardery.

Woolie Wool posted:

ZDoom mouselook is fine 99% of the time.

What? No it isn't! It's a horrible perspective-warping 45-degree tilt/pan. It was awkward back when Heretic (or was it Hexen?) first did it back on DOS, and it's wonky as hell now.

Dominic White fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Jan 25, 2016

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:09

Karasu Tengu: Feb 16, 2011; Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

Woolie Wool posted:

ZDoom mouselook is fine 99% of the time.

Literally every time I've used Zdoom I had to force mouselook off because it was making me motion sick, Marathon and Duke 3D do this too.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:10

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

opengl monsters look like someone took the doom beastiary and recoloured them in pastel puke, and is a much larger turnoff.

also Doom is glorious without mouselook and new players should be encouraged to try it

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:28

Dominic White: Nov 1, 2005

Jordan7hm posted:

opengl monsters look like someone took the doom beastiary and recoloured them in pastel puke, and is a much larger turnoff

What the hell kind of video settings are you using?

Software:

OpenGL:

The only difference that I can see here is that the sprites are lit the same as the environment in OpenGL.
Edit: OpenGL would be even closer if I'd selected the faux-software lighting mode, but I left it on default Doom.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:36

cool new Metroid game: Oct 7, 2009; hail satan

opengl's fine if you turn off texture filtering

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:36

Narcissus1916: Apr 29, 2013

I'm going to have a bitch of a time going to Star Wars Dark Forces. Not having full freelook isn't terrible, but the lack of WASD is gonna be tough. IIRC you can change the controls but by making it WASD you can't enter in any of the cheats since the A key makes you move.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:40

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Woolie Wool posted:

This one is really padded and overlong. Why does a video about the historical significance of Doom need a precise description of the baron of hell?

Perhaps because they're the boss of the shareware episode?

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:45

Tiny Timbs: Sep 6, 2008

Megadyptes posted:

opengl's fine if you turn off texture filtering

This is what I do. Makes it resemble software mode pretty well.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:47

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

Cat Mattress posted:

Perhaps because they're the boss of the shareware episode?

And? That doesn't make them any less boring. They're mostly used as a "door with health" in pwads for a reason.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:47

Segmentation Fault: Jun 7, 2012

Doom Newbie Source Port Guide:

What OpenGL ports of Doom really lose out on is the lighting. Areas in Doom and Doom 2 that are meant to be difficult to navigate due to poor lighting are lit much better, which ruins the experience IMO. Try playing MAP02 with GZDoom versus ZDoom or Chocolate Doom, and you'll see what I mean. As far as I know there's no OpenGL ports that emulate software lighting.

Segmentation Fault fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jan 25, 2016

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:50

Karasu Tengu: Feb 16, 2011; Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

Who the gently caress actually uses Doom Retro?

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:56

Dominic White: Nov 1, 2005

Segmentation Fault posted:

As far as I know there's no OpenGL ports that emulate software lighting.

GZDoom literally has a Software lighting mode.

This whole discussion highlights why just starting with Doom is a minefield, because 'Just use the most widely supported engine' is somehow deeply controversial.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:56

Segmentation Fault: Jun 7, 2012

Elliotw2 posted:

Who the gently caress actually uses Doom Retro?

I do. I really enjoy it.

Dominic White posted:

GZDoom literally has a Software lighting mode.

No it doesn't. It changes how lighting operates, but it still uses a 32-bit palette which messes with lighting.

Segmentation Fault fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jan 25, 2016

# ? Jan 25, 2016 01:58

Karasu Tengu: Feb 16, 2011; Humble Tengu Newspaper Reporter

On software style lighting GZdoom isn't too different from ZDoom except for the color depth.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:05

TerminusEst13: Mar 1, 2013

Dominic White posted:

because 'Just use the most widely supported engine' is somehow deeply controversial.

The problem is that saying GZDoom is "the most widely supported engine" is wrong. And this is coming from someone who does the majority of his work in its derivatives.

Discussing source ports is like discussing consoles, but it's absolutely vital because one single engine simply doesn't cover everything. At the risk of saying the obvious, different people want different things, and some people simply don't want what GZDoom offers.
I think discussion about the differences and what one does/doesn't do should be embraced because, heated or no, people need to be informed and make informed decisions about what does what.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:09

skasion: Feb 13, 2012; Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?

Narcissus1916 posted:

I'm going to have a bitch of a time going to Star Wars Dark Forces. Not having full freelook isn't terrible, but the lack of WASD is gonna be tough. IIRC you can change the controls but by making it WASD you can't enter in any of the cheats since the A key makes you move.

What do you need cheats for? DF is one of the easiest pre-2000 shooters I can think of, DF on Hard is less difficult than Doom 1 on HMP. Invincibility is literally an option you can toggle in the pause menu.

The far worse control crime is that as far as I know, you can't bind alternate attack to any mouse button.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:10

juggalo baby coffin: Dec 2, 2007; How would the dog wear goggles and even more than that, who makes the goggles?

Segmentation Fault posted:

Doom Newbie Source Port Guide:

What OpenGL ports of Doom really lose out on is the lighting. Areas in Doom and Doom 2 that are meant to be difficult to navigate due to poor lighting are lit much better, which ruins the experience IMO. Try playing MAP02 with GZDoom versus ZDoom or Chocolate Doom, and you'll see what I mean. As far as I know there's no OpenGL ports that emulate software lighting.

i thought the 'no sense of aesthetic' would be doomsday with the weird high resolution mods.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:12

Narcissus1916: Apr 29, 2013

skasion posted:

What do you need cheats for? DF is one of the easiest pre-2000 shooters I can think of, DF on Hard is less difficult than Doom 1 on HMP. Invincibility is literally an option you can toggle in the pause menu.

The far worse control crime is that as far as I know, you can't bind alternate attack to any mouse button.

Fanmade levels, mainly. Its been ages since I've played them, admittedly.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:13

Segmentation Fault: Jun 7, 2012

FirstPersonShitter posted:

i thought the 'no sense of aesthetic' would be doomsday with the weird high resolution mods.

that's "I eat eggs with ketchup and pizza with pineapple on it"

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:15

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

Elliotw2 posted:

Who the gently caress actually uses Doom Retro?

Doom Retro's hardcoded content hacks are an automatic no for me. Even ZDoom's content hacks can be annoying, especially when playing dehacked mods, and Doom Retro's are a thousand times more extensive.

Also GZDoom and no software ZDoom = nope

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:17

david_a: Apr 24, 2010; Megamarm

It bothers me how in every existing hardware Doom renderer you have a choice of having the enemies floating above the ground or having their feet cut off. The Doom sprites are intended to be drawn into the floor slightly but this isn't possible with traditional hardware rendering. I think there was one port looking at fixing this with shaders or something but I don't know if it exists yet.

Also, yes, the crunchy 8-bit palette gives totally unique light diminishing that none of the higher bit-depth renderers can match (for better or worse). The effect is much more subtle at higher resolutions but at 320x200 it's a big deal. Try playing UAC_DEAD.WAD with Chocolate Doom and notice how spooky the red rock tunnel before the invisible bridge is.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:18

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Segmentation Fault posted:

I do. I really enjoy it.

No it doesn't. It changes how lighting operates, but it still uses a 32-bit palette which messes with lighting.

No, the color depth doesn't change lighting, it changes color depth. There are a few ports of Doom with truecolor software renderers (Odamex for example), they give the same result.

What you do lose that affects the lighting is light banding -- but even that, you can get back by editing the "software" shader to replace floats by ints, and ta-da! light banding is back.

david_a posted:

It bothers me how in every existing hardware Doom renderer you have a choice of having the enemies floating above the ground or having their feet cut off. The Doom sprites are intended to be drawn into the floor slightly but this isn't possible with traditional hardware rendering. I think there was one port looking at fixing this with shaders or something but I don't know if it exists yet.

Strife Veteran Edition handles that, but it's a very inefficient process and it wouldn't be acceptable if Strife had any nuts-style level with thousands of visible sprites at once.

Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jan 25, 2016

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:19

Jordan7hm: Feb 17, 2011; Lipstick Apathy

Segmentation Fault posted:

This is all kinds of bad.

Anyway I don't think it's all that complicated, and you can probably get away with just telling people to use either gzdoom or prboom+ depending on if they want gameplay mods or not.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:20

Segmentation Fault: Jun 7, 2012

Cat Mattress posted:

No, the color depth doesn't change lighting, it changes color depth. There are a few ports of Doom with truecolor software renderers (Odamex for example), they give the same result.

What you do lose that affects the lighting is light banding -- but even that, you can get back by editing the "software" shader to replace floats by ints, and ta-da! light banding is back.

I'm not sure how hex-editing a shader file in order to get a feature is a defense of the port but okay

Jordan7hm posted:

This is all kinds of bad.

Anyway I don't think it's all that complicated, and you can probably get away with just telling people to use either gzdoom or prboom+ depending on if they want gameplay mods or not.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:20

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

david_a posted:

It bothers me how in every existing hardware Doom renderer you have a choice of having the enemies floating above the ground or having their feet cut off. The Doom sprites are intended to be drawn into the floor slightly but this isn't possible with traditional hardware rendering. I think there was one port looking at fixing this with shaders or something but I don't know if it exists yet.

Also, yes, the crunchy 8-bit palette gives totally unique light diminishing that none of the higher bit-depth renderers can match (for better or worse). The effect is much more subtle at higher resolutions but at 320x200 it's a big deal. Try playing UAC_DEAD.WAD with Chocolate Doom and notice how spooky the red rock tunnel before the invisible bridge is.

I'd like to see a "nostalgia mode" cvar for ZDoom which renders the world at 200p (any aspect ratio) and upscales it to your native resolution, but draws the UI at full res so the aspect correction doesn't introduce artifacts in the menus or status bar.

E: Sure you could use Chocolate Doom but Chocolate Doom will never have widescreen ever.

Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jan 25, 2016

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:21

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

The correct Doom port to recommend to just some random schlub who's playing doom for the first time is a PRBoom descendant, preferably one with GL rendering enabled just because it'll be zippier. It'll even handle like 90% of wads out there.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:23

a retard: Jan 7, 2013; by Lowtax

I'd pick GZDoom if they want gameplay mods, GLBoom if they don't, Zandronum if they want multiplayer.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:24

Cat Mattress: Jul 14, 2012; by Cyrano4747

Segmentation Fault posted:

I'm not sure how hex-editing a shader file in order to get a feature is a defense of the port but okay

If you want to hex-edit an ASCII text file, it's your problem.

code:

float R_DoomLightingEquation(float light, float dist)
{
	// Changing this constant gives results very similar to changing r_visibility.
	// Default is 232, it seems to give exactly the same light bands as software renderer.
	#define DOOMLIGHTFACTOR 232.0

	/* L in the range 0 to 63 */
	float L = light * 63.0/31.0;

	float min_L = clamp(36.0/31.0 - L, 0.0, 1.0);

	// Fix objects getting totally black when close.
	if (dist < 0.0001)
		dist = 0.0001;

	float scale = 1.0 / dist;
	float index = (59.0/31.0 - L) - (scale * DOOMLIGHTFACTOR/31.0 - DOOMLIGHTFACTOR/31.0);

	/* result is colormap index (0 bright .. 31 dark) */
	return clamp(index, min_L, 1.0);
}

Change index into an int, and there you go, banding.

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:32

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# ? May 31, 2024 20:48

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

Cat Mattress posted:

If you want to hex-edit an ASCII text file, it's your problem.

code:

float R_DoomLightingEquation(float light, float dist)
{
	// Changing this constant gives results very similar to changing r_visibility.
	// Default is 232, it seems to give exactly the same light bands as software renderer.
	#define DOOMLIGHTFACTOR 232.0

	/* L in the range 0 to 63 */
	float L = light * 63.0/31.0;

	float min_L = clamp(36.0/31.0 - L, 0.0, 1.0);

	// Fix objects getting totally black when close.
	if (dist < 0.0001)
		dist = 0.0001;

	float scale = 1.0 / dist;
	float index = (59.0/31.0 - L) - (scale * DOOMLIGHTFACTOR/31.0 - DOOMLIGHTFACTOR/31.0);

	/* result is colormap index (0 bright .. 31 dark) */
	return clamp(index, min_L, 1.0);
}

Change index into an int, and there you go, banding.

code:

Unable to load shader Default:
Init Shader 'Default':
Fragment shader:
0(173) : error C7011: implicit cast from "float" to "int"
0(176) : error C1101: ambiguous overloaded function reference "clamp(int, float, float)"
    (0) : gp5 f64vec4 clamp(f64vec4, float64_t, float64_t)
    (0) : gp5 f64vec3 clamp(f64vec3, float64_t, float64_t)
    (0) : gp5 f64vec2 clamp(f64vec2, float64_t, float64_t)
    (0) : gp5 f64vec1 clamp(f64vec1, float64_t, float64_t)
    (0) : gp5 float64_t clamp(float64_t, float64_t, float64_t)
    (0) : vec4 clamp(vec4, float, float)
    (0) : vec3 clamp(vec3, float, float)
    (0) : vec2 clamp(vec2, float, float)
    (0) : vec1 clamp(vec1, float, float)
    (0) : float clamp(float, float, float)

Linking:
Fragment info
-------------
0(173) : error C7011: implicit cast from "float" to "int"
0(176) : error C1101: ambiguous overloaded function reference "clamp(int, float, float)"
    (0) : gp5 f64vec4 clamp(f64vec4, float64_t, float64_t)
    (0) : gp5 f64vec3 clamp(f64vec3, float64_t, float64

I did what you told me to but me no am understand GLSL, help me. :saddowns:

My altered code:

code:

float R_DoomLightingEquation(float light, float dist)
{
	// Changing this constant gives results very similar to changing r_visibility.
	// Default is 232, it seems to give exactly the same light bands as software renderer.
	#define DOOMLIGHTFACTOR 232.0

	/* L in the range 0 to 63 */
	float L = light * 63.0/31.0;

	float min_L = clamp(36.0/31.0 - L, 0.0, 1.0);

	// Fix objects getting totally black when close.
	if (dist < 0.0001)
		dist = 0.0001;

	float scale = 1.0 / dist;
	int index = (59.0/31.0 - L) - (scale * DOOMLIGHTFACTOR/31.0 - DOOMLIGHTFACTOR/31.0); // int

	/* result is colormap index (0 bright .. 31 dark) */
	return clamp(index, min_L, 1.0);
}

# ? Jan 25, 2016 02:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Early FPS Megathread: the kids need to learn about TekWar sooner or later

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