Tartar (EE-fork, DOS) - maintenance build available 05.05.24

[invictius]

I'm finding that translucent projectiles have a dithering effect, is this just something that can't be fixed due to dos limitations?

[ludicrous_peridot]

If we are talking about the same thing here, Tartar uses TRANMAP-base approach for translucency by default, the limitation of which is that colors obscured by translucent objects do not result in accurately blended ones but instead in "approximated" colors falling into the 256-color palette the game runs with. This actually produced a pretty good result, but occasionally a color may look out of place when an imp's fireball flies by. 

 

Tartar has an alternative translucency mode that does no blending or mapping and instead applies "checkers" or "grill"-like effect to the translucent objects (a-la Sega Saturn Doom). I personally use that one all the time so you will see it on screenshots and recordings. However, the translucency effect really becomes noticeable only with higher resolutions (like 1280x1024), is more prominent on CRT displays and is "locked" to 50% translucency. 

 

Edited September 19, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot

[ludicrous_peridot]

New build is available and so OP is updated to reflect that. Here's the "what's new" digest (documentation update is desperately behind the schedule):

• SMMU/Doom Legacy skins can be loaded (not their sounds though), including some cases that previously crashed Tartar; 
  and -skins command line argument can be used to add all WAD-s in SKINS directory to the list of WAD-s to load
• SMMU player colors restored and long overdue color translation bug fixed (was caused by how blood recoloring was done for monsters)
• New optional single player game mode where engaging Use after death respawns the player right on the spot without restarting the level
  (reading this thread made me do this). Since the player's pawn still becomes paper thin this could lead to "impossible situations", so I've also added
• a bindable hotkey to restart the level after giving consent (I think about it as an upgraded End Game hotkey, that I never understood really).
• New optional shading style that renders all sectors at the same light level all the time AND does away with "diminishing light" and headbobbing
  This is labeled as Wolf3D-look-a-like mode in the menus and was implemented exactly for that purpose,
  but also works an "accessibility mode" with fewer nausea- or epilepsy-educing situations in the game world,
  and no pitch-black impossible to see or presented in too high contrast areas for those to whom they may be a concern.
• One can just TARTAR -file BTSX_E1A [Enter] and Tartar will pick up the other half.
  This works with BTSX, KDiKDiZD and some Wolfendoom PWAD-s like Arctic Wolf
• An experimental feature to keep Arctic Wolf and Arctic Wolf SE progression smooth, buy not requiring that the player
  exists the game and loads with a different set of PWAD-s. Tartar does all that by itself.

• Also numerous other Wolfendoom-related items I've posted about elsewhere.

• Bindbable hot keys to switch between music tracks without typing IDMUS-blah-blah

• Credits section in the Menu  

Keep in mind that Tartar hacks for PWAD-s are mostly MAPINFO-/OPTIONS- activated and will require "compatibility" WAD-s from Tartar distro to be installed. I recommend copying TAPE directory from GOODIES in the distro into the local directory you run Tartar from and if you are updating from previous version, I would suggest backing up locally and replacing TAPE\* with the newly available WAD-s from the distro.

 

Finally, bordering infringement I have made a DOOM 2 WOLFMIDI.WAD from (awesome) VGMPF conversions and long-time-ago published MIDI-s by Bobby Prince. Everyone makes such WAD, and I did too so that not literally everyone has to. It is found WOLFMIDI directory under GOODIES.

 

E: @SiFi270, to answer your question (it's been a looong time since you've posted it) - sadly Tartar cannot run DSV4 as I have decided to not have support for  dynamic (as in their lump names not hardcoded) sounds; so the moment level script calls for custom sound to be played the port bombs out.  EE: It was a really a shame it did that and I had to reupload anyway due to a bug I found, so did the most straightforward thing I could to have it actually running in the currently available build.

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot
DSV4

[ludicrous_peridot]

Was digging in doomkid's vanilla WAD collection the other day and figured out with the numbers of MAP01-s in there, I could be getting a "D_RUNNING disorder".

 

To counter that I put together a music track randomizer in Tartar, which tries to figure our if for the map at hand a random music track is more suitable (or can be set to always play a random track at level start). The randomizer only chooses from the "built in" Doom music tracks.

 

 

 

Also made the menus a little more user friendly by exposing more Tartar-specific features which were "hidden" as configuration properties or console commands:

 

Spoiler

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

Was poking around Doom 1.1 IWAD the other day and could not resist doing this:

 

Partly to be able to load the IWAD, and partly for the joy of putting the dormant assets for a spin.

 

Also since I recently found out Doom 1.1 has colors that are slightly off, compared to more recent versions, I also put in a mode to imitate this (GIFie is a wrong medium for this, but gives the general idea)

Spoiler

 

Did a video of my testing as well

Spoiler

 

 

Edited July 10, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot
asses

[hawkwind]

imitate has only one m ... ;) .

[ludicrous_peridot]

On 6/28/2023 at 2:28 PM, hawkwind said:

imitate has only one m ... ;) .

 

Ohkaaay... testing a new build that fixes that, and also restores pitched sounds (they never worked in Tartar before, despite the menu entry being there), fixes a small bug for when starting the game with -playdemo with screen size setting that has borders, has music randomizer work in Shareware version and also pulls in from Gerwin's MBF sources Doom 1.2 demos support that I have previously sadly overlooked...

 

Now that Doom 1.2 demos support, I stumbled upon when I was investigating Doom 1.1 demos support, 1.1 being a curious version that seems to have slightly different game physics. Anyway, by making some nearly random changes to things movement parameters on top of those in Gerwin's code, I luckily got stock demos from 1.1 Shareware look agreeable:

 

 

 

EDIT: Spend a bit more time looking for and fixing bugs, polishing track randomizer and checking through bugs list in the docs (e.g. made Eviternity demos look a bit less miserable in Tartar) - and then uploaded the updated build as current version.

E-E: ... and unleashed a bug which took out savegame compatibility with Eternity 3.29 and previous builds; apologies for this, should be fixed now and reuploaded.  

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot
updated version

[ludicrous_peridot]

The two most recent videos showing some features of latest build in action (well, being tested) have been made available again.

 

Doom 1.1 status bar shenanigans 

https://www.moddb.com/media/iframe/2650452

 

Doom 1.1 Shareware stock demos

https://www.moddb.com/media/iframe/2650461

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

I will be putting into TESTING dir of the distro at Mega a build incorporating (as in copied as is) code by @kb1 , @entryway and @Linguica found in this thread from almost 10 years old. "wiggly lines" were giving me a real pain and I though having the fixes in would at lest make hi-res part of this port a little more meaningful. 

 

E: Ok. nothing comes as easy as just  copying something in:

Spoiler

 

EE: fixed that now

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot

[ludicrous_peridot]

While I am anticipating Gerwin publishing a 2023 edition of his MBF 2.04 with the newest version with his custom Allegro library, have spent some time doing what Tartar was actually built for - playing Doom II Hell on Earth, so sharing a small update on two new option parameters to customize weapon change behaviour in those cases when the game decides to change weapons, not the player:

 

- It is now possible to stick to the top preferred weapon _always_. E.g. imagine with an SSG you fend off wave after wave of zombies running out of shells; now what's that - couple of shotguns lying among the steaming corpses; you lash to grab them and turn quickly to face the further onslaught, only to notice you now have the chaingun before you (you either had some bullets in the magazine, or picked up some before you picked up the shotguns) so you switch to the SSG, and while you are at it...  you are dead - but not with the option flag enabled. This also echoes a bit what I have been reading in the recent SSG vs shotgun threads, and @baja blast rd. notes on preserving game flow and decision economy... and also this:
 

Spoiler

 

- It is now possible to stick to the fists for while berserk is active. E.g. running over a BFG, or energy cells or whatnot - you are still ever ready to punch.

 

Also updated the menus again. Tartar options are now easier to find, Eternity Engine options screen has been restored to its original form and option to enable 3/3 for SSG/shotgun and 1/1 for fists/chainsaw from MBF has been given a menu screen toggle.

 

Spoiler

EDIT:

Also added compatibility wad under TAPES for BTSXE3PR, rebuilt with a modified version of Allegro for better MIDI file compatibility (e.g. can play un45 now), and fixed a crash with long wad names in Windows 9x, when changing the palette on the fly.

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot
fixes, fixes...

[ludicrous_peridot]

Changes in the newly uploaded testing build:

 

* Depending on whether Doom or Doom II IWAD is loaded different exit messages will be shown (this is to mimic 1.666 era Doom builds)

* Messages shown at exit will now actually be random 

* "tape" to describe "compatibility" PWAD-s was way to vague, so I am renaming those to "shims" (well, "shim" is after all a word from IT vocabulary, even if from the MS one, and is also related to engineering). The idea is that a shim can be put between the engine and a PWAD to improve the way the game holds together as a whole and makes it operate smoother.

Thus -shim command line argument was added to load a specific WAD as a shim and SHIMS directory will be checked for when autodetecting shims.

-tape command line argument and TAPES directory are still supported, but I will be replacing all mentions of those and of "compatibility wads" with "shim" in the documentation.

 

Finally, I've put together a map (talk about icebergs) of all the assets Tartar can/would load, as I was myself starting to get a bit lost in all the options:

engine                        | TARTAR.EXE itself
DeHackEd patch                | with -deh or -bex 
shim (I)                      | with -shim or autodetected from SHIMS\
auto-loaded DeHackEd patch 1  | dehfile_1 in TARTAR.CFG
auto-loaded DeHackEd patch 2  | dehfile_2 in TARTAR.CFG
IWAD                          | with -iwad or autodetected from local dir or DOOMWADDIR env var
fixes PWAD                    | from FIXES\ or dir specified with -fixes
fixes PWAD                    | ..
fixes DeHackEd patch          | ..
...                           |
fixes PWAD                    | from FIXES\<iwad name>\ or <iwad name>\ under dir specified with -fixes
fixes DeHackEd patch          | ..
...                           |
ETERNITY.WAD                  | unless COD.WAD is to be loaded
PWAD                          | with -file
DeHackEd patch                | ..
lump                          | ..
PWAD                          | ..
Related PWAD (**)             | autodetected in directory of the PWAD specified with -file
Related PWAD (**)             | ..
Related DeHackEd patch (**)   | ..
...                           |
PWAD                          | with -file
DeHackEd patch                | ..
lump                          | ..
...                           |
auto-loaded PWAD 1            | wadfile_1 in TARTAR.CFG
auto-loaded PWAD 2            | wadfile_2 in TARTAR.CFG
skin PWAD                     | from SKINS\ if -skins is specified
skin PWAD                     | ..
...                           |
KEYS.CSC                      | 
auto-exec script 1            | cscript_1 in TARTAR.CFG unless -nocscload is specified
auto-exec script 2            | cscript_2 in TARTAR.CFG unless -nocscload is specified
filter PWAD (***)             | from FILTERS\
filter PWAD                   | ..
JUMPWAD.WAD (****)            |
SELFIE.WAD  (****)            |
SELFIE.DEH  (****)            |
...                           |
intermission PWAD (*****)     | autodetected based on IWAD 
INTMAPNR.WAD                  | No Rest For The Living intermission backgrounds



(*)     - although shim is loaded earlier than any other WAD (even IWAD), 
          it's lumps cannot be overridded by any other WAD loaded afterwards
(**)    - list of filenames fo PWAD-s that are checked for accompanying WAD and DEH files follows
          - BTSX_E?*.WAD
          - KDIKDI_*.WAD
          - 1ST_ENC.WAD 
          - AFTERMTH.WAD
          - SOD.WAD
          - CONFRONT.WAD
          - TRAIL.WAD
          - SECRET.WAD
          - FUHRER.WAD
          - FAUST.WAD
          - ESCAPE.WAD
          - ARCTIC.WAD 
          for Arctic Wolf ARCTGFX1.WAD, ARCTGFX2.WAD, GFX1.WAD or GFX2.WAD can also be given
(***)   - "extras" start here
          these are loaded only after all preceding assets have been loaded and processed
          extras are always optional and loading can be avoided altogether with -noload
          also extras do not reflect in the list of loaded WAD-s, e.g. with LISTWADS CCMD
(****)  - only some lumps are loaded from these PWAD-s and DEH patches are very specially handled 
(*****) - intermission PWAD-s are only loaded when no other PWAD-s are specified 
          but with -wimaps loading of intermission PWAD-s can be forced 
          PWAD-s' filenames are:
          - INTMAPD2.WAD for DOOM2.WAD
          - INTMAPEV.WAD for TNT.WAD
          - INTMAPPL.WAD for PLUTONIA.WAD

 

Edited September 8, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot
formatting

[SilverMiner]

@ludicrous_peridot enable PMs pls, I wanna send you a savegame crash fix

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

On 11/4/2023 at 10:10 PM, SilverMiner said:

@ludicrous_peridot enable PMs pls, I wanna send you a savegame crash fix

 

Hey @SilverMiner, flipped back on, only for you :)

 

On 1/28/2023 at 2:21 AM, Woolie Wool said:

E: is there any way to define new episodes in Tartar? Even if we can't have full UMAPINFO, it would be really nice to have 2022ADO fully playable under Tartar.

I ended up doing this, if at least for Sigil and (hopefully) Sigil II to show up as episodes in menus. Still needs a "shim" wad to operate. Build's up for testing at moddb: https://www.moddb.com/mods/tartar/news/sigil-first-class-support-and-additional-doom-1-episodes

That said 2022ADO is still in this weird hybrid shape, where it requires the "shim", Doom 2 IWAD to trigger "commercial mode" and Doom 1 IWAD for textures...  I may fix this someday.

 

One other thing - I was following up on discussion @T-Squared was having on vogons with regards to how MBF sounds on an Adlib card, and have made changes to the Allegro to make it sound a bit more accurate to how DMX sounded (and in fact to take OPL instrument timbres from the WAD-s, rather than a stand-alone file). So - a note for those building from source - this last change made the recent builds diverge from Allegro used by MBF at the moment. Let's see if I can revert to the one @gerwin supports after he releases the anniversary year build.

[ludicrous_peridot]

 

On 11/4/2023 at 10:10 PM, SilverMiner said:

@ludicrous_peridot enable PMs pls, I wanna send you a savegame crash fix

  

 

Thanks @SilverMiner for bringing this to my attention and providing a test wad. The suggested fix was a bit difficult for me to follow, so I have included slightly different one that fixes archiving/unarchiving of running fragglescript-s, which was apparently broken. It will be part of December testing build. Also, I am yet to check if saving/loading in smmutest.wad results in crashes, as you have advised.

 

EDIT: not crashing smmutest.wad will also be part of December test build.

Edited November 19, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot

[ludicrous_peridot]

It's kind of almost there, so I will update the download packages in about an hour's time and OP as well.

 

The way long/short filenames play and that the name of the WAD uses roman numbers (who would have thought - Doom II had romans in title, but the IWAD is doom2.wad, oh well...) kind of borked the autoload stuff I put into Tartar in anticipation, so the way to run the game would be:

 

TARTAR.EXE -shim SHIMS\SIGIL_II -iwad DOOM -file SIGIL_v1_21 SIGIL_II_V1_0

for LFN systems or
 

TARTAR.EXE -shim SHIMS\SIGIL_II -iwad DOOM -file SIGIL_~1 SIGIL_~2

for non-LFN systems; for the latter be sure to load SIGIL II after SIGIL for TEXTURES lumps to align correctly.

EDIT: builds are up, OP updated

Edited December 10, 2023 by ludicrous_peridot
builds up\

[Dynamo]

Apologies if this is information that's available already, but I couldn't find it: what is the version number of the latest build?

[SilverMiner]

@ludicrous_peridot how did you manage to reduce the exe's size to 438 kilobytes? (from 1,5 megs)

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

1 hour ago, Dynamo said:

Apologies if this is information that's available already, but I couldn't find it: what is the version number of the latest build?

 

That's a valid question as this does not get very clearly documented. I am referring to latest version as "stage 5"; in credits section and on moddb page it still says "stage 5 testing". Sadly the July version is also mislabeled as "stage 5" in the distro :( and have not yet even tagged it in the repo - I'll fix this eventually. This probably makes a bit more sense when looked at this way:

Spoiler

 

2 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

@ludicrous_peridot how did you manage to reduce the exe's size to 438 kilobytes? (from 1,5 megs)

 

I actually perform debug symbols stripping and binary compression starting with this release. Thanks to a hint from @MrFlibble I also switched from DJP to UPX (which seems to be the latest and greatest DJPGG executable compressor).

[MrFlibble]

5 minutes ago, ludicrous_peridot said:

switched from DJP to UPX

The funny thing is that I found UPX almost by accident, I couldn't locate DJP from my experiments with REKKR-MBF last year (and I had learned about DJP from DOSDoom documentation of all places), so after some brief Googling and finding something that wasn't it (but probably related) I stumbled upon UPX as the continuation of DJP and realised that the latest version is still online at SourceForge.

[SilverMiner]

I've used 4.2.1 on some of my stripped exes and got 426 kbs. Cool

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

Looking at @dgondos MBF PR made me realize there was an omission in latest release when it comes to Sigil and Sigil II support, so I have reuploaded shims to hopefully fix this.

[ludicrous_peridot]

Heads up on a version being available that sports all the previously mentioned Allegro improvements for FM music, and seems to take care of visual inconsistencies with the original Eviternity (I guess the sequel being out now has made me push these over the line finally - and also @RjY's fairly clear hint). I mean there's still your occasional slime trail here or there, but seemingly nothing serious.
Now, with regards to music Tartar had added to it over the last few months configurable bindings for next and previous track selection, random music playback. With this build one extra "thing" is being added that makes this set somewhat "feature complete". The "thing" is an Easter egg, so I'm not documenting it explicitly yet, but I'd say that one would need an invocation of one's favorite Doom composer to have it activated...

[SilverMiner]

Why LFs have been replaced with CR+LFs?

[ludicrous_peridot]

Oops, no idea.

In the meantime - I have progressed a little with fixing some of the demo compatibility issues, and improved support for 1.1 format demos to avoid getting out of sync when chainsaw was used, meaning that registered version demo reels are all working now. 

 

 

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

Fresh from an oven an updated build with this (^^) and some other improvements. 

Notable things are that not only 1.1 shareware and 1.1 registered stock demos play fine now - with recent bugfixes also Sigil II and (previously broken) stock Plutonia demos play without going out of sync, which makes me happy and warm inside :) Overall, the build did not receive that much testing, as was the story with most of the stuff I shared in the last few months, but I figure out I may get more feedback by sharing early, than classifying the binary as "testing" and sitting on it for a few more weeks.

 

What improved:

Spoiler

* New cheat code to activate continuous (a-la playlist) music tracks playback
* Reworked player movement code to fix issues with Doom 1.1 demos going out of sync on chainsaw use
* Simplified Sigil and Sigil II auto-loading logic. Please follow the updated user guide to play the WAD-s
* Bugfixes, relevant mostly for Sigil, Sigil II in handling Cyberdemon and Mastermind deaths in final episode maps, "taller-than-normal" textures and skies rendering, demo playback 
* Experimental support for better Adlib polyphony via hacks in Allegro sound library
* Option (activated from the shims) for drawing main menu in line with original Doom and Doom 2 to remove artifacts with certain WAD-s (REKKR, BtSX) and shims for these mods
* Fixed certain HOM occurences (e.g. Eviternity MAP30, Flashback E1M2, Octate), option controlling this is available under Options > Eternity > Tartar 
* No longer fade to red in CHEX Quest
* Fixed a bug introduced in 2023 that made some demos go out of sync, including Plutonia stock demos
* Bugfixes for demo playback, including issues with demos going out of sync on lost soul bounce
* Restored READ THIS item in Doom 1 main menu (e.g. REKKR used this)
* Option menus have been again slightly reorganized, and FPS counter is no longer on by default 
* Show less ads for the registered version of Doom 1
* Correctly refer to skull key names in game pickup log
* Under the hood changes for how new episode definitions were handled in EPISINFO lump
* No longer attempt to play Adlib-specific intro track in older versions of Doom

 

What that did not improve, sadly, with regards to the demo support are Eviternity demos. They still go out of sync, and at this stage I am unlikely to pursue further compatibility with demos recorded at higher complevels in PrBoom. I went ahead and checked what the difference was in one demo, and apparently in Tartar bruiser's slime ball went "over" a specter, while in PrBoom specter was hit. Not sure if a blockmap-related or a movement-handling-related thing (I kind of rule out blockmaps here, as both the slimeball and the specter are observed continuously tic after tic during the events of the scene, and it appears that it is the radius math that tells Tartar there was no hit, but could be wrong here) - but can imagine there would be quite a handful (bucketful really?) of improvements Tartar would need had it tried to be on par with PrBoom.

 

Spoiler

 

Edited May 10 by ludicrous_peridot
release notes

[taufan99]

@ludicrous_peridot Tangentially related, but with the release of the Doom fix patch for the Sega Saturn port, do you plan on ripping the pitch-corrected sound effects from there for at least your Saturn Doom Experience mod?

[liPillON]

On 5/5/2024 at 2:56 PM, ludicrous_peridot said:

since the article was not approved for the homepage one has to go into the mod page to see it

 

unfortunately it seems the whole mod page is currently under re-evaluation..

no tartar-specific articles, downloads, addons pages are available

https://www.moddb.com/mods/tartar

 

what's up with that?

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

On 5/5/2024 at 3:40 PM, taufan99 said:

@ludicrous_peridot Tangentially related, but with the release of the Doom fix patch for the Sega Saturn port, do you plan on ripping the pitch-corrected sound effects from there for at least your Saturn Doom Experience mod?

That's unlikely happening - but wasn't the aim of the patches to make Saturn version sound the same as PSX? Because if that was the case, Saturn TC shipped with PSX sounds already, as converted by the original PSX TC team, so... is there really a point? 

 

But back on track,

On 5/7/2024 at 9:12 AM, liPillON said:

what's up with that?

 

sorry I have not the slightest. I last heard from the admins three days ago and will get in touch again, say, next week, but for now it does not seem anything is happening to bring the things back from the currently borked up state.

Meanwhile, I have updated the post above with the release notes, and made the builds available on github.

 

I have been experimenting further with ancient assets support and added capability to have "tiled statusbar" and (made up) weapons inventory screen available with post 1.1 IWAD-s (in the video, which is rather old, they come from 1.1 shareware IWAD being played). This is achieved by side loading the original DOOMPRES.WAD, which one can fairly easily produce from what's on idgames archive. The aim, however, is to recreated "pre-pressrelease" pickup log in the status bar, for which DOOMPRES.WAD seems to contain the needed typeface patches, with both normal and capitial letters, mind you!

 

Spoiler

... and also playing around with using the ITEM slot to show some additional tactical info (e.g. latest picked up or currently active powerup, or something similar).

[ludicrous_peridot]

Recently read about the BSPEEK.WAD in Doom Legacy thread of this forum, so couldn't resist trying it out.

Spoiler

 

 

On the previously mentioned topics, Tartar on moddb got fixed and in-status-bar pickup log (via sideloading DOOMPRES.WAD) is now in HEAD.