Does Anyone Else Get Frustrated When YouTubers Do Doom Dirty?

[act]

This is probably the stupidest, most entitled statement I've ever given in my life. But I genuinely feel a bit of frustration when I hear YouTubers give such a short-end description of Doom. For example, Doom source ports. These are a massive treasure trove of wondrous technological delights, showing the evolution of 3D Rendering APIs; from Software Rendering to OpenGL to DirectX to Vulkan. It's beautiful. Not to mention the cornucopia of different source ports, each with their own application. So why is it always GZDoom? Where's the love for PrBoom, Crispy Doom, Woof!, etc.? But, that I can excuse. One thing I can't find an excuse for is how GZDoom - and any other source ports - aren't ever sold as what they are, proper video game engines. No, they're always treated as some sort of advanced mod for the original DOSBOX Doom. It just grinds my gears how something so beautiful is thrown to the wayside as garbage.

And whenever there is footage of Doom in GZDoom, it always looks so ugly. Texture filtering is just cranked to the max. If you're a YouTuber who plans on recording Doom and using GZDoom, heed my words. Get that ugly filtered texture mess out of here; Doom's textures are works of art and deserved to be presented in their full, corn-flake crispness. And while you're at it, get everyone to see the glory of Graf's creation and get some dynamic lights on. And also: SmoothDoom. Seriously, SmoothDoom needs way more credit than it gets. It makes the game so much more fluid feeling and fun to watch.

[Fireseth]

As cool as it would be for every YouTuber to be a Doom source port expert, I think it's perfect that YouTubers are still talking about Doom today, even if it's just a "short-end description" of it. The more people that get exposed to Doom, whether that's from some YouTuber using GZDoom at default settings, it'll increase the population of Doom players- which in turn will additionally increase the population of average source port enjoyers that will use Crispy Doom, PrBoom, etc.

[OniriA]

I couldn't care less.

[nightdiveistrash]

I do care more

Edited March 20, 2022 by Zerodelta

[MattFright]

The only kind of situation i'd consider as YouTubers doing Doom dirty is covering it with Brutal Doom as some sort of "obvious improvement". Most of them do so implying (if not outright stating) they think it's a net upgrade over the (or at least how they perceive it as) clunky, weightless, weak and poorly aged unmodded feel of classic doom gameplay...

 

 

I remember even watching a video someone made about Doom saying they only played it in Crispy for faithfulness, saying that they'd otherwise prefer GZDoom for being able to play with...you guessed it, Brewtal Dewm.

Edited March 20, 2022 by MattFright

["JL" was too short]

10 minutes ago, MattFright said:

The only kind of situation i'd consider as YouTubers doing Doom dirty is covering it with Brutal Doom as some sort of "obvious improvement". Most of them do so implying (if not outright stating) they think it's a net upgrade over the (or at least how they perceive it as) clunky, weightless, weak and poorly aged unmodded feel of classic doom gameplay...

 

 

I remember even watching a video someone made about Doom saying they only played it in Crispy for faithfulness, saying that they'd otherwise prefer GZDoom for being able to play with...you guessed it, Brewtal Dewm.

 

+1.

I can't really get mad at anyone for playing Doom how they prefer it, even if it's not in the same zip code as how I prefer it.  Go nuts with your mods if that's how you follow your Doom bliss.  I just won't watch it.

 

But you damn well better respect the classic gameplay.

[tsocheff]

bilinear texture filtering, fucking god everything looks like playdough 

Edited March 20, 2022 by stupid ass

[Astronomical]

I don't care to much about gzdoom as I would rather the most popular port being able to run everything, I don't like people complaining about how x or y wad can't run with brutal doom because of dehacked enemies, or anything else like that.

[DrRock]

9 minutes ago, stupid ass said:

bilinear texture filtering, fucking god

Usually accompanied by those extra lighting effects that clash horribly with the game to make things look even worse(though looks fine for maps designed to be more visually intricate).

 

It really depends on what sort of channel/video people are going for when it comes to how much expertise and detail they should throw at the viewer. Most folks who'd simply want to see some more casual doom content aren't probably terribly interested in getting an in-depth look into source-ports, engine quirks and the like. If mentioning some of these things doesn't bloat a video too much and is appropriate enough to bring up, then sure.

[Hawk of The Crystals]

Does it really matter though? It's not like some random no-name youtuber killed your pet bunny just by playing the game how they prefer visually.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Crystal-Hawk_D00M

[Nefelibeta]

I'm fine with texture filtering, some speedrunners even record demos with it on. But saying brutal doom is an improvement of the original doom is something that I can't bear for real.

[Lippeth]

Psh, yeah, they don't even set con_notifylines to 1 or set the pixel-shape to 1.2 while reducing their vertical ratio by 20% to compensate for the stretch. What is this, amateur hour? Get with the program, YouTubers!

 

Edit: If the sarcasm above wasn't obvious enough, any difference between the settings you enjoy and the settings someone else uses is excruciatingly trivial. If Brootal Doom, widescreen, uncapped framerate, mouselook and texture filtering improves someone's experience, it's a positive. 100% of ZDoom videos on youtube and map testing videos on here use settings that wouldn't be enjoyable for me to use but it's not their responsibility to do anything for me.

Edited March 21, 2022 by Lippeth

[Zulk RS]

I don't really get annoyed. Hell I think I might be playing with Texture Filtering on because I don't usually fiddle with graphics settings in GZDoom (except for Dynamic Light settings because the default is too dark for me). As for not giving GZDoom the recognition for what it is: A fully fledged game engine, I mean I doubt that's something most people realize. I think I realized what GZDoom was truly capable of when I heard of Hedon. So I can't really blame them. 

 

Like a lot of people said. The thing that irks me a bit is when someone treats Brutal Doom as a net upgrade over vanilla gameplay. Honestly though, I may not be looking at the right channels but all the YouTubers I have watched that play Doom and have a decent enough subscriber base all generally play vanilla and are not Brutal Doom Fanboys (here, by fanboys I mean guys who think Brutal Doom is an objective improvement)

[Thelokk]

Meh, the 'port war' in general kind of irks me (it feels very sectarian and at times pointless - I mean, it's not like one can't have multiple ports and run them based on the map, right?) but, as far as demanding technical know-how from every doomtuber, I couldn't care less. Not everyone needs to be a techie or a deep-dive neckbeardo, as long as they entertain me. I enjoy Decino's analysis videos, but I equally enjoy BigMacDavis' banter in spite of his absolute ignorance of port subtleties.

Seconding the feelings about Brutal Doom though - it's an alternative, *not* an improvement. 

Edited March 20, 2022 by Thelokk

[7Mahonin]

I setup GZDoom to look and feel as close to the original DOS game as possible but with higher resolution, increased sound channels, etc. I turn cl_maxdecals to 0 and remove the transparency of the lost soul and imp fire balls. So I think anyone with the know-how can easily get GZDoom to look the way they want it to. It just takes the user taking some time to mess with the settings. 
 

Personally, I enjoy YouTube videos that feel almost like “demos” of the maps or videos that are more like a well put together review or analysis. I don’t care for videos that are just someone talking while playing a level because a lot of times they talk about things that distract from what you’re viewing. I think those videos work better for live viewing, where the person can engage with a live audience, than they do for videos you just sit and watch because it feels like the person is just talking to themselves for the sake of it. 
 

Also, I will give an unpopular opinion and say I don’t prefer smoothdoom. It looks unnatural to me. It’s hard to explain why though, but I think it has something to do with how the frames look more seamless (and I get that’s basically the point) in a way that feels too seamless - that it is almost comical in a way.

Edited March 20, 2022 by 7Mahonin

[rzh]

I do dislike the way GZDoom looks by "default" and I hate how people who don't do a lot of research make videos on Doom, especially when they get something wrong.

But I like GZDoom itself and use it often, but for gameplay mods and TCs only, not for mapsets. That's what complevels are for.

Basically, GZDoom is good but attracts lots of "ignorant" (in quotations because I can't find the right word for it, even ignorant is too harsh) people and that leaves a bad taste by association.

[idbeholdME]

5 hours ago, 7Mahonin said:

I setup GZDoom to look and feel as close to the original DOS game as possible but with higher resolution, increased sound channels, etc. I turn cl_maxdecals to 0 and remove the transparency of the lost soul and imp fire balls. So I think anyone with the know-how can easily get GZDoom to look the way they want it to. It just takes the user taking some time to mess with the settings. 

Absolutely this.

 

Pretty much every single option is there for you to change, within the literal sea of options GZDoom offers. But it can be quite overwhelming for someone using it for the first time. Hell, they even implemented a "simplified" version of the options a couple releases back due to how much stuff you can configure. Needless to say, I am in the same boat as you. Pretty much everything vanilla, just higher resolution and FPS, unlimited Lost Souls, no infinite height and removed bugs (blockmap and such).

 

The only 2 things I know of which can't be changed in GZDoom to be as in vanilla:

 

1) RNG behavior. In GZDoom, everything has its own separate RNG table instead of everything sharing the same one. Means the game is much more deterministic. If a Revenant hits you for 60 damage and you load the game, you will always get hit for 60 damage on the next Revenant hit. The only way to force a change is to quit GZDoom completely and restart, so that the table gets repopulated. In vanilla, you'd always get a different result as basically everything in the game moves the one RNG table that is used.

 

2) GZdoom uses a more precise movement than vanilla. This one is pretty much unnoticable but it is not possible to change back to vanilla. If I remember correctly, in the vanilla, it was impossible to travel straight North, South, West and East.

 

The RNG behavior is the one thing I'd love for GZDoom to implement as an option to pick which behavior you want.

 

The default settings of GZDoom are quite far off from a purist point of view and require changing a decent amount of stuff. Which I think is the reason most people just use the defaults as they don't want to fiddle with it. The presets help, but only with fine-tuning will you achieve exactly what you want.

 

For example, by default, GZdoom makes it so that Partial Invisibility makes the enemies not spot you.

Edited March 20, 2022 by idbeholdME

["JL" was too short]

5 hours ago, rzh said:

Basically, GZDoom is good but attracts lots of "ignorant" (in quotations because I can't find the right word for it, even ignorant is too harsh) people and that leaves a bad taste by association.

 

I think ignorant is usually fair to say, actually, assuming you're talking about the sort of people this thread is about and not just people who enjoy being able to look all the way up and down in Doom, for instance.  (I'm in the latter category myself.)  Ignorance is not actually a moral flaw, incidentally; it just seems that way since, if we're actually pointing out that someone is ignorant, it's usually because they did something to call attention to their ignorance and thus "ignorant" implicitly means "ignorant and making an ass of oneself."

 

These people, from what I've gathered (and I could always be wrong!), tend to present themselves in ways that suggests they aren't familiar with the full history and breadth of Doom mapping and modding.  You don't have people going "Oh yeah, I've been playing Doom for the past two decades, played Alien Vendetta and Scythe and BTSX and all that jazz, but Brutal Doom is the first time Doom's ever been good."  This would make them, in fact, ignorant.

Not to say it's impossible for someone to be fully cognizant of the Doom scene and yet still be all-in on Brutal Doom, but in practice that's somewhat rare, shall we say.

Edited March 20, 2022 by jerrysheppy

[rzh]

14 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

 

I think ignorant is usually fair to say, actually, assuming you're talking about the sort of people this thread is about and not just people who enjoy being able to look all the way up and down in Doom, for instance.

Definetly not you, I meant the type that thinks the Unity port is a remake in the Unity engine, the type that thinks Brutal Doom is a "simple" mod, the type that complained that Sigil is a Doom 1 episode and that Sigil is too hard/ not balanced/ unfair when they played on UV (they also compare Sigil with much harder mapsets and recommend people play those instead, while being caught on video that they have the reflexes of a fossil when they open a door behind which two barons wait, only to have said player look down at their hooves and slowly look up towards the barons' faces only to get balefired into oblivion like something out of Looney Toons). They also don't know anything about MIDIs or vanilla Doom and don't understand why the music or the SECRET SOUND aren't the same.

 

Then there's also people that keep repeating old and debunked myths, people that riff on Sandy Petersen without any reason or context, people that claim GZDoom only gives you modern resolutions, people that claim Doom is 2D, people that claim it was keyboard only, people that say E1 is the only good episode and so on.

Edited March 20, 2022 by rzh

["JL" was too short]

Well, there's a lot of different types of ignorance, some of which tend to be comorbid with one another and some of which don't.  I, for instance, believed the whole "designed for keyboard only" thing for a long time, even though I'm not one of the BROOTAL DEWM types this thread is about.  I don't know how common it is among them, though.

[rzh]

8 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

Well, there's a lot of different types of ignorance, some of which tend to be comorbid with one another and some of which don't.  I, for instance, believed the whole "designed for keyboard only" thing for a long time, even though I'm not one of the BROOTAL DEWM types this thread is about.  I don't know how common it is among them, though.

That's ok as long as you don't make any videos claiming it as facts, especially when you have over 10k subscribers. It's less about being mistaken as it is about spreading misinformation because of a lazy approach to research that's bothering me.

[Faceman2000]

I had to stop watching a video once cuz the dude kept saying Doom doesn’t have a Y axis. XD

 

Other than that it’s usually fine unless it’s Gmanlives making a fool of himself.

["JL" was too short]

1 hour ago, Faceman2000 said:

I had to stop watching a video once cuz the dude kept saying Doom doesn’t have a Y axis. XD

 

Not only doing the "Doom is 2D!!1" thing, but not understanding which axis is which?  That's some next level shit.

[dasho]

1 hour ago, rzh said:

That's ok as long as you don't make any videos claiming it as facts, especially when you have over 10k subscribers.

 

"Being wrong is ok if you're not popular."

[Major Arlene]

Hi, former DoomTuber here :)
Honestly, the only time I'd understand getting upset over how someone plays a mod/map is if they play in a way that intentionally breaks it (i.e. with noclip or jumping (hi, past me)). Or if you're presenting information, not getting something right that's easily disprovable (i.e. exists in a wiki or otherwise is easily Google-able). Sometimes people get things wrong though and I tend to be patient, just leave a comment to correct or otherwise inform the person if it's not a common pattern of behavior from their videos. As jerry said further up, ignorance is not a moral failing, persay, obviously there's limits to that if the behavior continues but someone getting something wrong the first time is how they learn that they were wrong.

As far as opinion pieces such as "E1 is best" or "you should only play with BD" or so on- that's just that, an opinion, and you can agree or disagree to your heart's content. Much of what is discussed about Doom that isn't strictly about its code or other program data is subjective and people do need to remember that. If you find you don't gel with a YouTuber because of their subjective opinions, I suggest unsubscribing or otherwise consuming their content less. We could all argue until the end of time about whether or not The Chasm sucks or whatever but no one has the correct opinion on it because there's no right answer, I tend to find those types of arguments futile in the best of circumstances, arguing about it in YouTube comments is even less appealing.
Unfortunately there are going to be people on YouTube who have uninformed or misguided or otherwise weirdly framed arguments for what they believe about the game. That's just the side effect of YouTube, it's a free service anyone can use, and really the biggest thing to learn is to filter what you digest if it causes you a lot of distress. I'm not saying never listen to an opinion that is different from yours (otherwise I'd still be using texture filtering to this day) but a lot of unnecessary stress can be avoided by not continuing to torture yourself with videos from people you don't like. There's a giant, enormous world of media out there that can be consumed, find what you like and roll with that. I find it super counterproductive to just constantly bitch about creators who don't play the way you like them to play or have a subjective opinion that is different than yours, there's a bunch of DoomTubers on the internet, just go find a different one that you do like.
I guess to close this out and to answer act's original post, GZDoom is:

1. a port that runs pretty much everything, with the exception of maps made specifically for certain ports, faithfulness to original intent aside (which I get, but it's a big w/e if it's just single player non-speedrun play, be happy they're out here experiencing the map at all). it streamlines the process for people who have to spend time not just recording, but editing their videos. struggling for a while to get a certain port to work right can be frustrating so if someone finds something that works for them then they'll stick with it. can also be a matter of hard drive space.
2. GZDoom is really only now picking up as a game engine, rather than something that plays modern maps. believe me, this grinds my gears but it's how source ports as a whole have always been viewed. Having Doom in the name doesn't help this as the name simply suggests that it runs Doom instead of new games, at least from an non-mapper/modder perspective. it's also legal distinction- a full game using an engine, technically speaking, means no assets from other games.
3. texture filtering/dynlights/smoothdoom- a subjective (and sometimes, performance) thing. I'll cringe if someone plays my maps without dynlights but if it means they can play at 30 instead of 10 FPS and actually complete it, then go for it. that's their prerogative.

TLDR unless someone is saying that original Doom was made in like the 1970s or something stupid like that, be nice or find something else to watch.

[The BMFG]

i hate it when someone reviews a map of mine while playing it with a gameplay mod that drastically changes everything about the game

[Kinsie]

People can play however they want, and if that means rocket jumping through all both of my maps at 20fps on an old version of ZDoomGL with texture filtering kinda-sorta visible through all the CRT-emulation screen shaders they have applied, well, more power to 'em. It's a free internet, allegedly.

["JL" was too short]

3 minutes ago, The BMFG said:

i hate it when someone reviews a map of mine while playing it with a gameplay mod that drastically changes everything about the game

 

There's someone who was doing a heavily modded playthrough of RAMP and when they got to my map the description said something like "Oh, I had to noclip to beat this map."  Which is... so hard to understand, otherwise, that I'm forced to conclude that their mods fucked something up in the scripting somehow.  (I didn't actually watch that video because I didn't want to see my map's gameplay end up being butchered, even out of morbid curiosity.)

[ImproversGaming]

It makes sense to me that everyone can play doom, mods and wads the way they enjoy – that’s kind of the point. If you are generous enough to develop maps, mods or whatever, for others to play, make sure you specify the intent if you wish it to be played a particular way - I read the notes! Some will ride roughshod over this, but that is just how it is.

 

In terms of ignorance, I am at the bad end of that spectrum and Doom has become somewhat complicated compared to playing the originals - like: hey what complevel are you using on that source port to play this pWAD and have you associated the correct iWAD (and this is the very, very, basic stuff). Then you fold in the vast in-game options (having trouble seeing Pinkies, are you set to shaders?). There is a lot going on so I would tend to be forgiving to those that don't know. I use the PrBoom+UMAPINFO source port but could not really tell you much about it, but I do appreciate that a lot of volunteer work goes on to develop and maintain these.

 

Damn, now I am feeling guilty so basically, thanks to everyone that puts in so much work for my benefit, I do appreciate it even if I do not always know what it all means – my ignorance does not devalue your great work.

[rzh]

1 hour ago, dasho said:

 

"Being wrong is ok if you're not popular."

More like "Being wrong is ok if you're not popular for being considered by your average person an authority in the field"