Specters are too invisible! How to fix?

Everybody knows:

- The specters are patially invisible.

- The water is wet.

- The fire is hot.

However! Around 10 years ago, when I was playing IWADs using Doom2.exe in DOS-BOX, the specters were hard to spot, but pretty visible even from a distance. Nowadays, in Eternity Engine and DSDA-Doom, the specters are hard to see even in brightly lit rooms!

Tarnsman's Projectile Hell especially suffers from this: the specters can be reliably seen only in melee! Makes using Rocket-launcher into a real lottery. Roll the dice, to see, if there is a random specter in your face... If yes - you win a tasty FaceRocket! HOORAY! (Or not, I guess...).

So here are two questeions:

- Why did the specters became worse?

- Does any graphical setting fix this?

Use software renderer instead gl.

1 hour ago, Azure_Horror said:

- Does any graphical setting fix this?

Idk about Eternity, but for DSDA you can try changing General -> OpenGL options 1 -> Sector Lighting Mode from glboom to shaders.

4 hours ago, Hitherto said:

Use software renderer instead gl.

Eternity doesn't have a GL renderer.

14 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Eternity doesn't have a GL renderer.

Not bad. All gl light modes in Doom ports looks very nonauthentic imho.

I even didn't know how it looked nowadays in DSDA-doom gl mode, but at least in old glboom+ 2.5.1.4 spectres was completely blurred, without any "fuzz" and so very hard to see unless gamma correction is turned ridiculously high. Good if DSDA has fixed it somehow.

Spectres are not there to be seen. They are there to be felt.

On topic: Use DSDA-Doom 0.25 (in the future)

Woof has vanilla style fuzz, it would be great if Eternity added that too.

4 minutes ago, pantheon said:

Woof has vanilla style fuzz, it would be great if Eternity added that too.

Uhm, Eternity explicitly only has the vanilla fuzz. It's the same algorithm.

Spectres should be as hard to see as possible. There should be a hint, so you can see them if you're watchful, but only that.

Strange, using GZDoom, 1080p with gl and I don't have trouble seeing specter's or no more than your supposed to.

Edit: ignore this I didn't read the OP properly.

I use DSDA-Doom 0.24.3 on opengl at 1080p and for that specific configuration: it uses the same noise filter that the og dos exe uses, but when I switch to software it turns into this weird texture that's similar to the transitional screen melt a noise filter that's somewhat equivalent to the algorithm that the original DOS game used, but does appear different (this noise algorithm can also be found in GZDoom among many other filters [It could also be in ZDoom but I haven't tested that yet])

I could've sworn there was an option in DSDA to switch between a noise filter and true translucency for the invisible filter like in GZDoom but nope, none that I can find

prboom+ however does have an option for `thing sprite fuzz` and `weapon sprite fuzz`, but those just change between several true-translucent options and none of them are the same noise filter that either DSDA or dos uses!

Meanwhile in Woof!  I just get that weird melt screen filter. this is rediculous! I'm going to John Doom right now for a feature request: Unified Fuzz Options!

addendum: As Maribo stated: all of these sourceports use the same algorithm for enemy and character transparency that the original game used, but they scale horribly and seem to be only available thru software rendering, gl-rendered ports however seem to have 0 standards for fuzz filters; GZDoom seems to have a good amount of options for fuzz effects, prboom+ also has options but they're all stuck in true-translucency, and DSDA-Doom forces on a noise filter (which is sadly the best option for high-res play with visible specters)

Is there code out there that emulates the way vanilla doom did it that actually scales good on higher resolutions? I doubt it cause I feel like we would've already seen it in these DSDA and prboom+ by now. At the very least I'm still going to to a feature request to ask for sprite fuzz options in DSDA-Doom and prboom+ since I already like playing with true-translucency but feel like there should be more diverse options that what we currently got (or in the case of DSDA-Doom: any options at all!)

On 12/17/2022 at 8:05 PM, Azure_Horror said:

Everybody knows:

- The specters are patially invisible.

- The water is wet.

- The fire is hot.

 

However! Around 10 years ago, when I was playing IWADs using Doom2.exe in DOS-BOX, the specters were hard to spot, but pretty visible even from a distance. Nowadays, in Eternity Engine and DSDA-Doom, the specters are hard to see even in brightly lit rooms!

 

Tarnsman's Projectile Hell especially suffers from this: the specters can be reliably seen only in melee! Makes using Rocket-launcher into a real lottery. Roll the dice, to see, if there is a random specter in your face... If yes - you win a tasty FaceRocket! HOORAY! (Or not, I guess...).

 

So here are two questeions:

- Why did the specters became worse?

- Does any graphical setting fix this?

Dude, play with software renderer if you are using DSDA Doom. In other ports like Prboom plus, let the Thing sprite fuzz remain to  Darken,  and then in other ports like Woof!, Crispy! its not at all a problem because they by default use Software renderer only.

Spectres look horrible and non Vanilla/Boom when played in OpenGL with DSDA. That kinda sucks really!

I find the invisibility effect to be by far the best in GZDoom. The vanilla one in software renderer. The result is awesome. They are easily visible in brightly lit areas but nearly invisible in dark areas. Not sure how GZDoom exactly achieves it. Probably scales the effect into high resolutions?

One of the few things which I consider a genuine improvement over the original Doom where the Invisibility effect didn't really serve any purpose (never had issues seeing them back then). It made the Specter levels in the 1Monster.WAD some of the most memorable I've played and in general, -fast Specters in dark areas are a genuine horror experience now where sound is your best bet for telling that there might be Specters around.

No idea about how other ports handle the fuzz effect though.

11 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

I find the invisibility effect to be by far the best in GZDoom. The vanilla one in software renderer. The result is awesome. They are easily visible in brightly lit areas but nearly invisible in dark areas. Not sure how GZDoom exactly achieves it. Probably scales the effect into high resolutions?

 

One of the few things which I consider a genuine improvement over the original Doom where the Invisibility effect didn't really serve any purpose (never had issues seeing them back then). It made the Specter levels in the 1Monster.WAD some of the most memorable I've played and in general, -fast Specters in dark areas are a genuine horror experience now where sound is your best bet for telling that there might be Specters around.

 

No idea about how other ports handle the fuzz effect though.

I just played GZDoom with software rendering on 1080p and that has the most accurate and best looking fuzz effect by a country mile!

Every other source port I used, including ZDoom, scales the effect's resolution with the output resolution which results in it looking ugly and harder to see. I suspect this is similar to how the melt screen's algorithm works and that gzdoom hard codes those algorithms to stay at 320x200 pixels, as the melt screen is noticably chunkier on gzdoom on higher resolutions then even other hardware accelerated source ports

God, now I want everyone to take a chomp on some of GZDoom's code

edit: WAIT, NO! THERE'S AN OPTION FOR SPRITE FUZZ IN GZDOOM THAT EMULATES VANILLA'S SPRITE FUZZ ALMOST TO A T!!! WHY HASEN'T EVERYONE ELSE STOLEN THAT CODE??? FUCK!!!!

32 minutes ago, No-Man Baugh said:

edit: WAIT, NO! THERE'S AN OPTION FOR SPRITE FUZZ IN GZDOOM THAT EMULATES VANILLA'S SPRITE FUZZ ALMOST TO A T!!! WHY HASEN'T EVERYONE ELSE STOLEN THAT CODE??? FUCK!!!!

So I checked this, GZDoom's software renderer does indeed seem to have a new fuzz effect, but it's not actually the vanilla fuzz effect at all, just an uprez'd mimic of it. It's also inaccurate because it's clearly missing the refraction the effect is supposed to have: 

38 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

So I checked this, GZDoom's software renderer does indeed seem to have a new fuzz effect, but it's not actually the vanilla fuzz effect at all, just an uprez'd mimic of it. It's also inaccurate because it's clearly missing the refraction the effect is supposed to have: 

(Demonstration program)

So not a very good candidate to use.

 

Yo that predator effect is cool! what's the command to switch to it? I downloaded the demo program but can't figure out how to swap to it

But back on topic: While GZDoom's sprite fuzz mimic is imperfect, it's still far better than how most software rendered sourceports upres it, and way better than how prboom+ or DSDA-Doom handle it in their opengl modes

33 minutes ago, No-Man Baugh said:

Yo that predator effect is cool! what's the command to switch to it?

F5

Oh yeah. The ZDoom family fuzz effect does not mimic the vanilla exactly, but produces a vastly superior gameplay effect (IMO at least). Really makes Specters seem like ghosts in dark areas and gives even more value to the Light Amplification pickup.

I find specters pretty much invisible regardless of my settings in DSDA-Doom  so I was wondering if there is a way to replace specters with normal pinkies via a Dehacked patch that removes their invisibility flag. I would appreciate if someone knows of such a patch (or a similar solution). I already searched the Idgames archives using appropriate key terms, but found nothing. Thanks in advance!

32 minutes ago, Spicy tacodemon said:

I find specters pretty much invisible regardless of my settings in DSDA-Doom  so I was wondering if there is a way to replace specters with normal pinkies via a Dehacked patch that removes their invisibility flag. I would appreciate if someone knows of such a patch (or a similar solution). I already searched the Idgames archives using appropriate key terms, but found nothing. Thanks in advance!

Sure, that's pretty easy: https://user.fm/files/v2-69b4522226699b7da6c2f0774c0b0d90/nospectr.deh

 

Patch File for DeHackEd v3.0
# Created with WhackEd4 1.2.4 BETA
# Note: Use the pound sign ('#') to start comment lines.

Doom version = 19
Patch format = 6


Thing 14 (Spectre)
Bits = 4194310

33 minutes ago, Spicy tacodemon said:

I find specters pretty much invisible regardless of my settings in DSDA-Doom  so I was wondering if there is a way to replace specters with normal pinkies via a Dehacked patch that removes their invisibility flag. I would appreciate if someone knows of such a patch (or a similar solution). I already searched the Idgames archives using appropriate key terms, but found nothing. Thanks in advance!

You can give use Dehacked to remove the partial invisibility flag from the Spectre, something like this:

Thing 14 (Spectre)
Bits = 4194310

43 minutes ago, plums said:

Sure, that's pretty easy: https://user.fm/files/v2-69b4522226699b7da6c2f0774c0b0d90/nospectr.deh

 

  Hide contents

 

Patch File for DeHackEd v3.0
# Created with WhackEd4 1.2.4 BETA
# Note: Use the pound sign ('#') to start comment lines.

Doom version = 19
Patch format = 6


Thing 14 (Spectre)
Bits = 4194310

Thank you very much (again) plums! I really should learn how to create dehacked patches myself, since I enjoy customizing my experience with the game so much. I'm pretty sure all the information I need is widely available, so one of these days I'm gonna take a deep dive and I'll give it a shot!

 

 

 

 

I don't know why my response above is shown as hidden content, but I don't know how to undo it, so sorry for that!

52 minutes ago, Spicy tacodemon said:

I don't know why my response above is shown as hidden content, but I don't know how to undo it, so sorry for that!

No worries, the forum interface is a bit bad for spoilers.

Anyhow, you're welcome! The program you want to check out is WhackEd4. Making small tweaks like this is pretty simple in it, though of course you can get much more complicated. Resources and knowledge for Dehacked is pretty scattered all over the place but it does exist; of course you're free to ask here if you have any questions.

On 12/18/2022 at 2:15 AM, Hitherto said:

Not bad. All gl light modes in Doom ports looks very nonauthentic imho.

The indexed light mode of DSDA-Doom, however, looks identical to the OG Doom Software/Vanilla Based Lighting. In real life, tbh, it will be impossible to tell which renderer between Software or OpenGL you are using execpt from performance. (Opengl gives much better performance when compared to Software).

Also, an another major highlight of the port is that since 0.26.0, the spectre and partial invisibility fuzz effect looks very close to one of OG Doom or nearly identical to Vanilla. 

So, what you get is nothing but best of both worlds, i.e classic, authentic look and feel, high resolution, and very high performance ( very high fps)!

If you haven't checked it out, check it right now :

https://github.com/kraflab/dsda-doom