LZDoom 3.88b released

[Graf Zahl]

12 hours ago, P41R47 said:

Taking this in consideration, and hoping that differents map developers read this message, i suggest to, instead of the particle effect, use an animated texture like Thomas van der Velden do to simulate the rain in Revolution! Map02. That effect is unintrusive and, properly made, totally resembles rain. I tried using that texture in some test maps to see when it lags and, to my surprise, it needed a lot (really lot) of them to make it lag a little, while the particle effect, althought better looking, when bodies start to pile, it start to lag greatly.

 

While it is fully understandable that you feel this way, don't forget the other side of the coin:

The majority of users these days have systems that can effortlessly render such effects and not suffer slowdowns. So any mapper has to weigh in the pros and cons of each approach and choose what they think is best for their intended audience. Do they want to have an effect that reaches the last 10% of potential users at the cost of degraded visuals or is it better to just have an option to disable the effect for weaker systems and give the other 90% something that's looking nicer? I think most mappers would go for the second route.

 

[P41R47]

3 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

While it is fully understandable that you feel this way, don't forget the other side of the coin:

The majority of users these days have systems that can effortlessly render such effects and not suffer slowdowns. So any mapper has to weigh in the pros and cons of each approach and choose what they think is best for their intended audience. Do they want to have an effect that reaches the last 10% of potential users at the cost of degraded visuals or is it better to just have an option to disable the effect for weaker systems and give the other 90% something that's looking nicer? I think most mappers would go for the second route.

 

Thats a good approach to take into the ecuation, Zahl! But testing things i found out something that made me re-think what i said yesterday (oh, the life!). Well, i am currently playing TNT: Evilution, and it relly feel like a chore to me, just because i want to have a fresh memory of the levels as i play Revilution and the upcoming Devilution. Well, a chore no less. So in between levels i played other wads (Revolution!, Demonfear, and others), and i re started playing ''The adventures of Square''. Well i made my way through the first episode up to the secret level, ''Artic Lab''. What an unexpected discovery i made upon playig it.

The level uses custom snow particles to simulate the weather effect, and also a lot of lights and animations, and a lot of particles like gibs. Well, i don't know why, but my PC doesn't lagged at all. I even had bittorrent in the background downloading and uploading at the same time. And nothing! My PC not lagged in any moment.
This is something i found ''strange''. Winter's Fury (i know, it have a wheater effect on/off) lags a lot, and even with the candle and weather effect off!, and it have a lot less animations and things going around (Although the dust or blizzard effect its pretty heavy and ot is a constant in this levels).

Any clue why is that, Graf?
I have loaded a little amount of autoloads: Sbirghtmaps.pk3, Flashlights_BD.pk3, droplets_v15.pk3 and full_scrnhuds.pk3. And i played it with nothing in the background consuming resources. Maybe just slade3, cos i made little modifications (the usual smoothing with the animdefs for my own use here and there), but not in Winter's Fury.

[Graf Zahl]

Winter's Fury doesn't lag because of the weather effects, but because these maps contain a huge amount of scenery detail, partly realized with portals. That type of map requires powerful hardware to render smoothly, especially the portals can stall older graphics hardware very easily. Many years ago when I was still using a Geforce 8600 it was nearly impossible to play any level smoothly that had a somewhat larger portal effect, with my current system it's no problem at all.

 

[P41R47]

17 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Winter's Fury doesn't lag because of the weather effects, but because these maps contain a huge amount of scenery detail, partly realized with portals. That type of map requires powerful hardware to render smoothly, especially the portals can stall older graphics hardware very easily. Many years ago when I was still using a Geforce 8600 it was nearly impossible to play any level smoothly that had a somewhat larger portal effect, with my current system it's no problem at all.

 

Mmm i understand. So no Winter's Fury for me hahaha! I just have an AMD A10 with an integrated graphic card of 1gb, but no other graphic card. Any clue why, sometimes Eviternity winter levels lags sometimes? Although i played it just a momnet ago and it didn't lag at all! My PC is a sonnuva----

Maybe this lags a little? I used it randomly: just a custom gldef and animdefs that i made for a little more mood, and the splash effect on water that i found somewhere.
I used it a while during the first levels, but after seeing that it desn't affect the water in Eviternity i stopped using it.

CustomMOOD.zip

EDIT: aw, yes! It have a simple decorate to have colored blood for most monsters, and a little bulk up in terms of difficulty for the baron of hell.

Edited August 18, 2019 by P41R47

[Graf Zahl]

Eviternity can be a bit taxing on weaker graphics hardware, the levels are quite complex and open, and with the weather effects added may cause the occasional slowdown.

[P41R47]

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

Eviternity can be a bit taxing on weaker graphics hardware, the levels are quite complex and open, and with the weather effects added may cause the occasional slowdown.

Thats clarify almost everything i was experiencing in practically all the last cacowards winners. Some seems to be very taxing for my little potato! Thats why i love works like Revolution! They use the simple old school feel in very imaginative ways. I really like the modern standars but unfortunately i can't enjoy them as intended. Thnaks Graf for your time! And thanks for all your hard work in the Doom community!

 

[seed]

47 minutes ago, P41R47 said:

Thats clarify almost everything i was experiencing in practically all the last cacowards winners. Some seems to be very taxing for my little potato! Thats why i love works like Revolution! They use the simple old school feel in very imaginative ways. I really like the modern standars but unfortunately i can't enjoy them as intended. Thnaks Graf for your time! And thanks for all your hard work in the Doom community!

 

Seeing how weak is your hardware, you'll have a much better time with wads that have smaller and less complex maps (and not super detailed). Stuff like Eviternity will be quite a bit taxing, to say nothing of wads like Mapwich, Slaughter Spectrum, or the upcoming Elementalism that make heavy use of visual effects and are very complex. Running that stuff needs some power.

[P41R47]

2 hours ago, seed said:

 

Seeing how weak is your hardware, you'll have a much better time with wads that have smaller and less complex maps (and not super detailed). Stuff like Eviternity will be quite a bit taxing, to say nothing of wads like Mapwich, Slaughter Spectrum, or the upcoming Elementalism that make heavy use of visual effects and are very complex. Running that stuff needs some power.

Yeah, its very frustrating not being able to play anything to its full :/. As time passes, i will be only able to play wads that are vanilla-like :(. Thats why i like this fork so much. Any release of GZdoom beyond 3.3.2 played like a snail for me. But with this, at least, i can have a taste of the new wads out there. Yeah, i probably need to upgrade my computer, but i try to make the spent money worth it. So, until it is roasting like hell (or until i can't properly work with it), i will have to play something not so heavy taxing with my pc.
On a side note, i was thrilling Eviternity episode 3 map 3 and sudenly lzdoom crashed. Its the first time, for me at least, that any source port of doom crashed.
Here is the crash report, take a look at it, drfrag!

CrashReport.zip

EDIT: With no Droplet_v15 or Nashgore, Eviternity plays pretty smooth. Minor lag in episode 3 map 1 when reaching higher heights

Edited August 18, 2019 by P41R47

[Six-Shoota]

So request for non SSE2 build would sound odd

[drfrag]

On 8/18/2019 at 9:13 PM, P41R47 said:

 I hope you had the time to properly recover from your condition and to continue working on this fork, Drfrag.

 Sorry for the delay but i'm on a limited internet connection and i don't find the forum software very frienly.
 Thanks! I still suffer tinnitus and probably will be permanent but i'm trying to get used to it. Mine as happens often is cyclical, there are more or less good days and really bad ones. It's worst when it's time to go to sleep in the silence of the night even the good days, i'm still depressed but it's not as bad as previously. Besides my irritable bowel has gotten much worse. Medication helps with but there's nothing really effective for tinnitus.
 I left the fund campaign open and any help would still be welcome. May be i should start a Patreon for the project.

 I've tried your mod and for me it doesn't crash. I suspect the flashlight, it could be related to the recently fixed bug with dynamic lights destruction but i'm not sure if that could be the cause. I've tried with a different flashlight and no crash here either.

On 8/24/2019 at 9:49 PM, Six-Shoota said:

So request for non SSE2 build would sound odd

 LZDoom can actually be compiled without SSE2 on windows, i tried it long ago on an Athlon XP and a P3 and it should still work. If there's enough demand...

Edited August 29, 2019 by drfrag

[DANZA]

Hi! This branch is great and runs smoothly two instances with mods! Sadly there's no way to play with more than one gamepad, setting all of gamepad's axi's function to "none" solves one player moving the other, but button presses for actions still occur simultaneously. I hope in the future there's a way to specify which gamepad one wishes to use or to differentiate one gamepad from another on the customize control menu ("ltrigger1" instead of global "ltrigger").
Thank you for your work and hope that coping with your condition gets easier with time, take care.

EDIT: player one using Xpadder to simulate keyboard presses (with gamepad support disabled) also won't work, because the second player instance will still react to the first player button presses.

Edited October 26, 2019 by DANZA

[drfrag]

 Thanks, unfortunately i still suffer tinnitus. Next week i'll go to the neural-otolaryngologist or something like that. I should have started the patreon but i didn't feel like doing it. I'm still unemployed and my financial problems continue, also maintaining this is getting more difficult and requires quite a bit of dedication.

 I added support for 4 DInput joysticks with 32 button each some time ago for the next release, before all buttons were the same (sent the same events).

 I released 3.83 but i retired it due to a bug (it was an old bug and was fixed recently in GZDoom but in a different way) which made PB crash.

 I'll release 3.83a later or may be tomorrow i'm not sure.

[DANZA]

I'm sorry to hear that, I would love to support a patreon, but I'm unemployed myself and still gotta pay rent, things in Chile are kinda rough right now. Thanks, for still maintaining the fork, but take your time, and focus on yourself, when you hit rock bottom there's only a way up, at least that's what I tell to myself.
There's always little sparks of good in life to make it all worth it, I think. Stay strong.

[drfrag]

3.83a is out, i released it last night. Check the first post.

Thanks for your kind words. I know the port is mainly used by people who can't afford new hardware. I'm a poor guy too. I'll ask for 5€ only (i still don't really know how it works) and i need a small amount for basic needs, not even to solve the limited internet connection problem. The GoFundMe campaign is still open.

Edited October 28, 2019 by drfrag

[Danfun64]

How do I select the specific controllers for the four player fake split screen? Assuming that there is no support for multiple xinput controllers, how do I disable certain dinput entries so they become ignored?

[drfrag]

 You need to set the axes for the other controllers to none.

[drfrag]

 Sorry for the bad news, you knew my financial situation was already very bad but now i've lost my internet connection definitely (not a surprise since i already lost it temporarily several times) so in order to continue development i need some help to get another one from a different provider and pay part of the electricity bill for heating becouse it's expensive and it's very cold here in the winter. I only need 60€ or may be even less until things get better and i can get a telejob (as i've written in Liberapay i'm still screwed after the accident), i've started a Liberapay account hooked to my new Paypal acccount (my father doesn't want me to use his account this time). The GoFundMe campaign is still open as well. If only a few guys could help it would be enough to continue development.
 For now what i'm doing is writing posts offline (like i did in the old days, having internet at home has been a luxury for me) and then go to some place with a connection on battery to pull and push the code and i'll try to upload a release soon. So at least one more release is almost guaranteed. I still can read forum messages and navigate a little on my phone (only 500 MB data per month tough).
 If i manage to get some help i will start looking for a cheap offer and keep you informed. Thanks in advance!
https://es.liberapay.com/drfrag/

Edited December 4, 2019 by drfrag

[drfrag]

 Some news, a nice guy has given 20€ through GoFundMe (thanks!) and i've found an offer for 40€ (Lowi). So now to continue development (and for modern ZDoom too) i only need a bit more. Is there something wrong with LiberaPay? I could also accept direct PayPal contributions (BTW it's fine to give 5€). I tried to start a Patreon but looks messy and they said i had chosen a Premium account but i didn't choose anything. I don't think i'm asking too much, well for me 40€ it's a lot of money and it's quite miserable to try to develop anything without an internet connection at home. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-to-pay-drfrag039s-mortgage-after-accident

https://es.liberapay.com/drfrag/
https://www.lowi.es/ofertas-fibra-mas-movil/

[drfrag]

Well, that LiberaPay Campaign has been a HUGE success, exactly 0€ collected.
Since it seems no one is interested and i haven't managed to get the 20 remaining € to pay an internet connection i've decided to quit LZDoom development. So paraphrasing Graf: There you have it! No more LZDoom! It's not worth the effort since my work is no longer appreciated and it's painful to maintain it without an internet connection at home.
I've released a new version now mainly to fix the space bar taking screenshots in menus and to "celebrate" the Doom birthday (at least registered Doom).

[drfrag]

I've released 3.85. This will be the last version supporting WinXP.

I forgot to mention the texture colorization feature is not included.

[Doctor Nick]

Thanks a lot for maintaining this port! We're using it as the bundled source port for the official freedoom snap package.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Doctor Nick

[DwarfCleric]

On 8/18/2019 at 3:37 PM, P41R47 said:

Mmm i understand. So no Winter's Fury for me hahaha! I just have an AMD A10 with an integrated graphic card of 1gb, but no other graphic card.

 

Sorry my friend, what has been said to you there is a lie. It is right down to the particle effects indeed. Let me explain... Recently I went through a journey learning how to modify mods in Slade in order for me to play Hocus Pocus Doom (which also has lots of particle effects, like the snowfall in map05) After being done modifying Hocus Pocus, I went on to modify Winter's Fury as a test, just because I knew that one did not ran well on my laptop as well. Turns out I was able to significantly improve performance but couldn't finish it because I had a system crash and lost all progress on the file. Give me some 2 hours and I will reach you back with the modified Winter's Fury for you to test in your computer and report me if it runs better. I will show you that YES, you can play and enjoy Winter's Fury indeed (or whatever mod you want)

 

Important: test this with LZdoom! It is better for this!

 

All the "projects" that I work on will be uploaded to this same link right here for convenience. For now, would be great if you could do me a favor of testing the stock default Hocus Pocus Doom mod and right after test my modified version below (version 07), compare how both of them run in your computer. Warp to map05 and map16 (huge outdoors area) for a more immediate noticeable difference

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cy4b3dvu7k7clzp/AAA5Aju7NeDa6vZoVruhXDpJa?dl=0

 

Some other investigations of mine here in the form of screenshots comparing source ports:

https://imgur.com/user/hcueiwb47vndhs84

 

Stay tuned for some exciting stuff...

[DwarfCleric]

On 8/18/2019 at 7:13 PM, P41R47 said:

Thats why i like this fork so much. Any release of GZdoom beyond 3.3.2 played like a snail for me. But with this, at least, i can have a taste of the new wads out there.

 

Friend, I've uploaded a preliminary version of Winter's Fury in the dropbox link above, check the directory "Other Butchering Projects"

If anyone out there can test this out, does it run better now?

 

Again: test this using LZdoom for optimal results.

[DwarfCleric]

Well this was the feedback from @P41R47 to Winter's Fury modification, not much seem to be possible for that one not only because of the custom added scripts (these can be easily removed on Slade in matter of minutes) but mostly because it uses a ton of translucency effects and other scripts from the built-in zdoom.pk3 file (I have to learn how to disable these without having to manually remove lines from the map by hand...)

The download link for those wanting to test out Winter's Fury remains the same, as is the link for all the pre-configured source ports I choose to use.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8m9wrub7k42p22z/AAC8-H3Avpn2qZ1Y9ef3xxV8a?dl=0

 

 

On 4/11/2020 at 5:42 PM, P41R47 said:

Hi, DwarfCleric!
I tested your Winter'sFury revision on LZDoom 3.83a and LZDoom 3.85, at first they played pretty well, but as i went deeper into first map, where you have to destroy a core to open energy barrier and are ambushed by two hell knights, that are starts to lag a little, not much, but noticeable.
Second map after going up the elevator start to lag again, and when i reach the open area, well it lag notoriously. But the problem is after opening the blue door, near the cliff, that area is unplayable for me as how it lags.
Its sad for me, but its seem that i will never have the oportunity to play Winter's Fury.

...

But now, i remmeber that i played the firs complete episode a while back...

I think i was using GZDoom 1.8, so maybe if i go back to that build i could play it.

 

15 hours ago, P41R47 said:

I think its something that was changed in the core of GZDoom, because as i remember playing Winter's Fury first part complete and without problems some time ago. It was when i just found the gzdoom scene, back in 2012, so i think it was a build around 1.8 and 2.4. If i'm right, Nevander, a GzDoom mapper use that same version to build his Doom64 Retribution mod calling it the most stable build ever.

 That was my experience as well, at some point in time I was able to play this and other mods without problems, in this same very machine. Regressions happened.

[DwarfCleric]

@P41R47  @Pieruskwurje OK final update to end the off-topic circus... Winter's Fury revision02 uploaded, map01 runs OK but map02 is barely playable at the end, the rest even worse... no hope for this one... Learned a bunch more about how to extract more juice from Slade, that's the purpose of doing these experiments... Sharing info here in case anybody finds a use for it in the future.

Included in the link are 3 older versions of gzdoom that seem to run a bit better than lzdoom (for this specific mod) on my laptop.

Versions 1.9.1 (2016) 1.8.2 and 1.7.1 (2013)  -- just paste the contents of the included INI files and they are ready to play.

 

Older versions seem to be incompatible with the mod (Mapinfo error)  --  I don't know exactly what happens, the mod was released far back in late 2012 but only gzdoom versions from 2013 are able to open it? If it took the guy 1 year of development to finish this it should be compatible with gzdoom versions from 2011 at least? What version did he use to develop it? Anyway, this is one more example of potentially great mods that get softlocked into a specific version of the software because it relies heavily on gimmicks. Would be great to hear input from ATI Radeon users on how well this modified version runs.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mbs4q5ctx0ef7h7/AAAYrvfQ_D16o1UBlamVGgS7a?dl=0

[P41R47]

2 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

@P41R47  @Pieruskwurje OK final update to end the off-topic circus... Winter's Fury revision02 uploaded, map01 runs OK but map02 is barely playable at the end, the rest even worse... no hope for this one... Learned a bunch more about how to extract more juice from Slade, that's the purpose of doing these experiments... Sharing info here in case anybody finds a use for it in the future.

Included in the link are 3 older versions of gzdoom that seem to run a bit better than lzdoom (for this specific mod) on my laptop.

Versions 1.9.1 (2016) 1.8.2 and 1.7.1 (2013)  -- just paste the contents of the included INI files and they are ready to play.

 

Older versions seem to be incompatible with the mod (Mapinfo error)  --  I don't know exactly what happens, the mod was released far back in late 2012 but only gzdoom versions from 2013 are able to open it? If it took the guy 1 year of development to finish this it should be compatible with gzdoom versions from 2011 at least? What version did he use to develop it? Anyway, this is one more example of potentially great mods that get softlocked into a specific version of the software because it relies heavily on gimmicks. Would be great to hear input from ATI Radeon users on how well this modified version runs.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mbs4q5ctx0ef7h7/AAAYrvfQ_D16o1UBlamVGgS7a?dl=0

I tried you revision with gzdoom v2.2, DrawfCleric and it gives me an mapinfo error. But then i downloaded the original file of winter's fury, deactivate the snowfall and the flames, and it goes like a breezze. So its not a problem of horsepower of the PC, its a matter of optimization inside GZDoom. With more features, more resources it needs. 
I wonder if lzdoom could implement v2.2 core with the new features, that way, lzdoom will be totally playable in almost every low end PC.
But i'm nothing like an expert here. Drfrag surely would know better what is possible and what not with his fork.

Edited April 14, 2020 by P41R47

[drfrag]

One note about devbuilds: i see you've bundled an old LZDoom devbuild there, usually they are stable but sometimes i'm in the middle of a big merge and i only check that the engine compiles and runs before pushing the code, those are autobuilds. I can't remember what i was doing those days, but for instance it has happened that it crashed when i did more testing just after changing the resolution and i had to revert some things. So don't assume that a random devbuild will work. One thing i wouldn't like at all is that some guy makes a bug report for an ancient broken build you've uploaded here. BTW here is where i link my official releases so linking some random builds in this thread is something i don't like either but no big deal i guess. Seems the archives are clean but if they weren't someone could say that LZDoom has a virus when it's no my fault, see what happened to Crispy recently (false or not there was a positive so it's not that rare).

[drfrag]

On 4/12/2020 at 6:52 PM, DwarfCleric said:

This is a Dev release that I downloaded back in december, I don't care for what version number it is (should it make a difference?

Now i'm not sure if it's a devbuild or not, according to your screenshots it's 3.83a. But anyway being a legacy port using old versions you'll only get more bugs and far lower mod compatibility. For instance 3.83a had a nasty bug about taking screenshots in menus when you pressed space. So version number obviously makes a difference.

Edited April 15, 2020 by drfrag

[DwarfCleric]

On 4/14/2020 at 1:28 AM, P41R47 said:

I tried you revision with gzdoom v2.2 ... But then i downloaded the original file of winter's fury, deactivate the snowfall and the flames, and it goes like a breezze.

Hum, interesting. Any reason for you to test v2.2 specifically? I'm gonna take a look on that one. Thanks for sharing, this kind of info is crucial.

[P41R47]

2 hours ago, DwarfCleric said:

Hum, interesting. Any reason for you to test v2.2 specifically? I'm gonna take a look on that one. Thanks for sharing, this kind of info is crucial.

Just checked the year of release of Winter's Fury, and then i search for the last released build of gzdoom from that year. Taking in considertion that Winter's Fury was developed with that builds on mind, i started trying with the build released in that time, from 1.8 to 2.2. I just tested with those two, 1.8 and 2.2 and they worked just fine. Some minor slowdowns in really really big open areas like in map05. But the slowdown is almost not-there.

 

EDIT: forget to mention that i play with near vanilla settings. 640x480 no free look, palleted tonemap mode. I left dynamic lighting on because the autor put a great enphasis on the illumination and mood of the wad. Only drawback i have with this setting is that Winter's Fury cutscenes text is rather small and difficult to read. I tried playing in 1366x768 and it didn't make any difference, the text was still small and i'm soo acostumed to lower resolution that a field of view soo wide makes me feel a little lost in the fight. Its seems that i have good eyes, i think, if i can see the text without not much problem.

Edited April 15, 2020 by P41R47