why did doom avoid dithering?

[raymoohawk]

doom graphics don't have dithering in them, why do you think that is?

[Doomkid]

I think because the way light naturally bounced off the models they photographed for the Doomguy, Baron etc would have been "visually clashy" with other sprites if they'd used dithering. Dithering makes me think of nice-looking NES and Sega games, which tend to have a distinctly cartoony appearance even when they look really good (even compared to Doom, which looks "realistic" by comparison, lol). I think the team members handling the art side of things at old id (Kevin and Adrian if I remember my stuff) probably agreed that having a mix of natural shadows/gradients and dithering would have been an artistic clash.

 

That said, maps like DoomCity.wad use dithering really effectively in the sky texture - so it's certainly not without a place in custom Doom content and art assets imo! Just would need to be used selectively and sparingly. But maybe I'm wrong there too, maybe a wad filled with dithered assets would actually look badass.

[raymoohawk]

that makes a lot of sense. i was wondering if the id team might havae felt dithered textures looked worse than undithered ones when hugging walls. has anyone used daniel cook textures in pwads? a lot of those struck me as looking very doomy but when looking at them again i noticed they have quite a bit of dithering

[Chainie]

Doom have dithering, but artist used it tastefully. Doom palette have enough colors to avoid dithering in most cases

[Noiser]

For the most part, dithering was used as a technique when you had to work with a very limited color palette - which is the case of the Sega Genesis, for example. Doom and other VGA games were considered more advanced in that regard, with a high-standard 256 palette. So dithering was not seen as a necessity the same way as before.

Nowadays we see dithering and pixel graphics as an art-style (which is awesome btw) - but at the time it was more a matter of usefulness over aesthetical choices. Most of those checkered pixels would get blurred on a CRT-composite screen, showing solid colors on the screen or even creating a transparency effect with whatever was kept on the other side of the grid.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Noiser

[Alex S.]

7 hours ago, Chainie said:

Doom have dithering, but artist used it tastefully. Doom palette have enough colors to avoid dithering in most cases

 

This, exactly this! Color banding was more frequent due to the custom palette though.

[sandwedge]

well I thought I read about a mod that added dithering recently, so you can check that out to see why they might have avoided it:

 

 

I think it looks better without it.

Edited May 12, 2022 by sandwedge

[Koko Ricky]

Dithering, specifically pattern-based dithering, fell out of use as color palettes expanded, yet was still present even in the fifth gen era, as both N64 and PS1 games featured dithering. 

 

This screenshot from 1992's Dune is an interesting example of both techniques in use simultaneously.  

 

Doom, as demonstrated in the thread, has a few dithering sections in its assets, but in most cases there are enough shades of a given hue to prevent banding, making dithering unnecessary. Even the few gradient textures, such as the silver walls/flats, prefer an approach that while pattern-based, does not resemble dithering. 

 

Build games seem to lack dithering as well, and in a way it represented a turning point for graphics going forward, where dithering became more associated with 16-million color 3D games. 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Koko Ricky