ACE Engine v2 - DOS Doom II [vanilla++?]

[kgsws]

On 1/25/2023 at 12:25 PM, LuciferSam86 said:

Remember the target hardware is a 486 CPU running MS-DOS :)

If you don't go overboard a few 3D floors are OK. I have tested that on real hardware.

What kills frame rate quickly is too much transparency.

 

 

And here's an update:

[Gez]

The obvious: terrain splashes added.

The less obvious: hitscan collision code changed? IIRC hitscan in vanilla cannot collide with floors or ceilings.

[LuciferSam86]

10 hours ago, kgsws said:

If you don't go overboard a few 3D floors are OK. I have tested that on real hardware.

What kills frame rate quickly is too much transparency.

 

 

And here's an update:

Oh super nice for the development status and for the 3D floors ( of course a few ) on a 486 CPU :)

[Redead-ITA]

well checking out all of this, all i can say is "Yup, this guy is going to get codecacoward" and "Vanilla compatible Gameplay mods running on vanilla mapsets that use dehacked are going to be an actual thing." admittedly not implementing ACS is probably a wise decision in my opinion Not counting the fact that would probably lag a fuckton on dos with netcode, if zandronum isn't already an example of badly executed ACS code can get you.

With all i have read so far what i can see being possible is:

-Responsive melee weapons (Combine kegan's Combined_Arms has one that uses mostly custom powerups given to the player after hitting something to tell if he hit something that is either a wall.)

-Charge Attacks (both ala Megaman Megabuster and Serious Sam Granade launcher type of charge)

-Reloading (obviously)

 

Admittedly this is Tip of the iceberg stuff, i would even say mods like LT.Typhon could work theoretically seeing they work under zdoom but they use ACS (and so do a lot of yholl mods.)

Edited February 11, 2023 by Redead-ITA
prior version of the not implementing the acs felt harsh and nondescriptive.

[VaibhavRM]

Somewhere in the heavens...I am waiting ^{pfhor a Marathon total conversion ;)}

[Sixty-nine]

the more we have modding capabilities in vanilla doom, the more we are closer to vanilla hdoom

[Dexiaz]

2 hours ago, Sixty-nine said:

the more we are closer to vanilla hdoom

 

[Redead-ITA]

3 hours ago, Sixty-nine said:

the more we have modding capabilities in vanilla doom, the more we are closer to vanilla hdoom

i mean, a lot of the hdoom arsenal is mostly vanilla reskins and the only thing that can make it compatible kind of requires ACS to work, so that won't be happening sadly.

[kgsws]

It's getting close ... there are still a few thing missing, but i already have two (simple) demo maps.

 

Multiplayer had bugs so ...

 

Also, you were not able to pick player class in netgame ...

Edited February 26, 2023 by kgsws

[LuciferSam86]

Holy doom. Can't wait to experiment with this on dosbox :) 

[OpenRift]

16 hours ago, kgsws said:

It's getting close ... there are still a few thing missing, but i already have two (simple) demo maps.

 

Multiplayer had bugs so ...

 

Also, you were not able to pick player class in netgame ...

So does that mean that multiplayer is a no-go or that it just needs more work? Either way I'm completely blown away.

[Wagi]

On 1/29/2023 at 5:35 PM, Gez said:

The obvious: terrain splashes added.

The less obvious: hitscan collision code changed? IIRC hitscan in vanilla cannot collide with floors or ceilings.

Correct. Thankfully the math behind making the bullet puffs appear in the correct location is simple. The vanilla behavior is for them to spawn below the floor and then instantly snap up to the floor level. The math is just finding the ratio between (source.z - puff.z) and (floorz - puff.z) and pulling the puff back toward the source by that much

[kgsws]

On 2/27/2023 at 6:39 PM, Wagi said:

Correct. Thankfully the math behind making the bullet puffs appear in the correct location is simple. The vanilla behavior is for them to spawn below the floor and then instantly snap up to the floor level. The math is just finding the ratio between (source.z - puff.z) and (floorz - puff.z) and pulling the puff back toward the source by that much

Yeah, it is easy. I guess doom did not need that since there is no looking up or down. Heretic should have added this though.

 

 

 

Anyway, i was casually playtesting when this happened:

Notice hell knights disappear for a moment. Even 512 vissprites was not enough.

(and yes, i have found a few bugs during playtesting)

Edited March 3, 2023 by kgsws

[Ozcar]

So ace doom is like gzdoom for dosbox?

[Biz!]

8 hours ago, Ozcar said:

So ace doom is like gzdoom for dosbox?

Appears to be more-zdoom, but it is it's own thing now

[Mr.Rocket]

This is pretty amazing stuff @kgsws!

[Sixty-nine]

On 2/26/2023 at 8:43 PM, kgsws said:

It's getting close ... there are still a few thing missing, but i already have two (simple) demo maps.

 

Multiplayer had bugs so ...

 

Also, you were not able to pick player class in netgame ...

Vanilla Zandronum!?!?!!

[kgsws]

I am still working on demo maps while fixing bugs. So here's a small update.

 

It's not suposed to be actual game mod, just a few demo maps showing some features. But i have found many bugs this way.

Maybe it's a bit overkill for a demo WAD. Who knows how many people will even try these ...

[Uni Musuotankarep]

1 hour ago, kgsws said:

I am still working on demo maps while fixing bugs. So here's a small update.

 

It's not suposed to be actual game mod, just a few demo maps showing some features. But i have found many bugs this way.

Maybe it's a bit overkill for a demo WAD. Who knows how many people will even try these ...

That is quite impressive. I do hope for slopes in the ACE engine, but it's fine if you don't/won't add them.

[RastaManGames]

Can't wait for brand new community project for "ACE Engine"!

[OpenRift]

6 hours ago, RastaManGames said:

Can't wait for brand new community project for "ACE Engine"!

We would need proper tools for making stuff for it first, I think.

[Biz!]

8 hours ago, RastaManGames said:

Can't wait for brand new community project for "ACE Engine"!

Knee Deep in ACE

[kgsws]

20 hours ago, Uni Musuotankarep said:

I do hope for slopes in the ACE engine, but it's fine if you don't/won't add them.

Slopes won't happen with original renderer. While i have added many features, it still uses old rendering code, though modified to a degree.

 

9 hours ago, RastaManGames said:

Can't wait for brand new community project for "ACE Engine"!

I would love to see a brand new game with 100% custom assets. Kinda like Rekkr or Harmody does.

All distributed in a WAD file. Here's a trick: ACE Engine can be used as IWAD, and with shareware version of doom!

(just name your wad doom2f.wad and it will have top priority)

 

2 hours ago, OpenRift said:

We would need proper tools for making stuff for it first, I think.

It's ZDoom compatible. All features that ACE Engine supports are also supported in ZDoom. You don't need any special tools for that.

(though it needs a documentation since i do support only a limited subset of ZDoom features)

 

53 minutes ago, Biz! said:

Knee Deep in ACE

ACE on Earth.

[Biz!]

2 hours ago, kgsws said:

It's ZDoom compatible. All features that ACE Engine supports are also supported in ZDoom. You don't need any special tools for that.

(though it needs a documentation since i do support only a limited subset of ZDoom features)

If that's the case, then I could get started testing it all, I just have to pray that all the features you added are documented either here or on the github, hahah.

[No-Man Baugh]

3 hours ago, kgsws said:

3 hours ago, Biz! said:

12 hours ago, RastaManGames said:

Can't wait for brand new community project for "ACE Engine"!

Knee Deep in ACE

 

ACE on Earth.

 

Everything But the Kitchen ACE

[Midway64]

Can't wait for this to drop out. All the new features coded in are really neat!

AND IT'S VANILLA COMPATIBLE IN JUST ONE WAD FILE!

I couldn't ask for more!

[Uni Musuotankarep]

9 hours ago, kgsws said:

Slopes won't happen with original renderer. While i have added many features, it still uses old rendering code, though modified to a degree.

Perhaps you could try to make a new renderer, or somehow modify the current renderer to do it.

[Revae]

This is all pretty amazing. A+

[OpenRift]

On 4/7/2023 at 3:09 PM, kgsws said:

 It's ZDoom compatible. All features that ACE Engine supports are also supported in ZDoom. You don't need any special tools for that.

 (though it needs a documentation since i do support only a limited subset of ZDoom features)

Ah, I see. Yeah, documentation once it's finished would be nice.

[No-Man Baugh]

A long time ago in the Things About Doom I Just Found Out thread; Linguica made an interesting discovery on the game's vanilla sprite fuzz behavior:

On 1/10/2015 at 1:04 PM, Linguica said:

On a hopefully less contentious subject, I was thinking more about the partial invisibility effect and I think I can reasonably claim that the existing implementation is bugged. An subtle algorithmic bug, and one with an outcome that id decided to keep, but still bugged.

The normal code uses as the engine steps down each column of the invisible sprite is:

*dest = colormaps[6*256+dest[fuzzoffset[fuzzpos]]]; 

Where fuzzoffset[fuzzpos] is either a certain positive value or a certain negative value. The effect of this is that when it's positive, the engine copies the pixel value below the current position, and when it's negative, it copies the pixel value above the current position. The value is then darkened a little by the "6*256" part and applied to the current position. The effect of this is that when the code is going down a column, and it copies the pixel above the current position, it's copying a pixel that was just itself copied and darkened, so the new value gets darkened a second time. If the next pixel down gets copied from the pixel above it, then the same value gets darkened a third time, etc.

Like I said, this is a fairly subtle bug, but it does seem like it's due to an ill-thought-out algorithm, rather than an intentional effect. Anyways, you can "fix" it by only darkening a pixel if you're copying from below it, since any pixel copied from above is being copied from an already-darkened one. (Except for the very first pixel in a column, so we special-case that as well.)

if(fuzzoffset[fuzzpos] == -FUZZOFF && count != (dc_yh - dc_yl))
	*dest = colormaps[dest[fuzzoffset[fuzzpos]]]; 
else
	*dest = colormaps[6*256+dest[fuzzoffset[fuzzpos]]]; 

Anyways, this is the result:



The spectres are definitely a little harder to see, but the pixel-warping is more obvious as well. Look at the UAC logo on the door - in the normal version, it mostly appears as if it is rendered normally but with a sort of stipple effect applied on top of it, whereas in the "fixed" version it's clearly being warped.

 

 

Will it be possible to integrate this alternate rendering of Specters and player invisibility as an option in ACE Doom?