The Best Modern 2.5D Engine - GZDoom or EDuke32?

[jmpt16]

So GZDoom gets use quite a lot for 2.5D styled FPSes, but Eduke only got used once (AFAIK) for a standalone commercial game.

I personally think EDuke is the better engine, at least for the inherent advantages Build Engine has over the Doom Engine, but I can't deny the ease of use GZDoom has.

Edited November 14, 2022 by jmpt16

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

The results speak for themselves - compare this place to the Duke community. GzDoom is much more accessible, and experienced mappers can make Build-like maps anyway just by using GzDoom magic. I certainly wish there was more community content for Blood and Shadow Warrior though.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Imo, Gzdoom takes the cake. Easily. Granted, I haven't done anything in eduke32 for a few years but I do remember using custom (or just non-duke3d) assets was a major pain in the ass. I have not played around with the new features Ion Fury brought to eduke, I'm sure it's gotten pretty awesome. That said, I wonder if there's any features eduke32 has that gzdoom doesn't. I'm sure more knowledgeable people here can correct me.

Anyway, I think that the modifications in Hexen were already surpassing Duke's BUILD engine.

[Gez]

14 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

at least for the inherent advantages Build Engine has over the Doom Engine

Which are?

[jmpt16]

Just now, Gez said:

Which are?

 

Built in colored lighting, destructible enviroments, workarounds to room-over-room (admittedly this no longer matters as much) the portal system in general, etc.

[Gez]

6 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

Built in colored lighting, destructible enviroments, workarounds to room-over-room (admittedly this no longer matters as much) the portal system in general, etc.

All that stuff exists in GZDoom.

 

It has colored lighting (with a lot of possibilities as you can control separately light color, fog/fade color, material colors like in Doom 64, glow effects from floors or ceilings, plus dynamic lights). It has destructible environments; those have been possible since Hexen really (thanks to scripts) but GZDoom goes above and beyond with the ability to assign a number of hit points to geometry. Room-over-room is fully supported with 3D floors, 3D midtextures, 3D actors, and yes it also has portals.

[Herr Dethnout]

Theres not point of comparison. By far, GZDoom wins, and since it actually added some stuff from RAZE (Sister project for Build Games), it makes even a better engine for making Build styled games. At this point I can not call GZDoom a Source Port anymore.

GZ Engine is a better name for it, right? Who's with me?

[Herr Dethnout]

22 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

 

Built in colored lighting, destructible enviroments, workarounds to room-over-room (admittedly this no longer matters as much) the portal system in general, etc.

GZ Can do that too, I think the only advantage Build has against GZ is a better voxel handling (Works in software and it doesn't turns into a perfomance trainwreck when using it frequently) and Map format, idk if his better than BSP but for what I see in Shadow Warrior and Blood, it can do pretty neat things.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Herr Dethnout

[Redneckerz]

Why not also compare it to the Quake Engine considering Build was around the same timeframe.

 

38 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

So GZDoom gets use quite a lot for 2.5D styled FPSes, but Eduke only got used once (AFAIK) for a standalone commercial game.

There are more standalone EDuke games. Just not as prominent.

 

Have to say, there isn't something comparable to The AMC Squad when it comes to content in GZDoom. (Each episode basically being a standalone game)

38 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

I personally think EDuke is the better engine, at least for the inherent advantages Build Engine has over the Doom Engine, but I can't deny the ease of use GZDoom has.

EDuke doesn't really have any inherent advantages over current-day GZDoom.

 

Especially now that GZDoom will get baked lighting ala Quake, EDuke's primary visual treat is in Polymer with Doom 3 style lighting. Except that carries a heavy penalty.

 

Not egging on the engine: I know what people have made with it and it can go head to head with the GZDoom standalone titles. Its just that EDuke is another way of development, shared with less people over those who create games with GZ.

[jmpt16]

Just now, Herr Dethnout said:

I think the only advantage Build has against GZ is a better voxel handling

 

Right, how the hell did I miss voxels in Build?

[jmpt16]

Just now, Redneckerz said:

Not egging on the engine: I know what people have made with it and it can go head to head with the GZDoom standalone titles. Its just that EDuke is another way of development, shared with less people over those who create games with GZ.

 

I know this might be a controversial question, but what about performance? Ion Fury runs flawlessly on my PC, but there are quite a few GZ games that have frequent framerate dips. Selaco, for instance. Great game, pushes GZD to it's best, but a 2.5D game should not run so sluggishly, let alone a fast paced game.

[Kinsie]

I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone commit the self-harming act of wrangling .CON script.

[jmpt16]

Whoever picked "other", show yourselves.

[jmpt16]

1 minute ago, Kinsie said:

I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone commit the self-harming act of wrangling .CON script.

Touché.

[Herr Dethnout]

2 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

 

I know this might be a controversial question, but what about performance? Ion Fury runs flawlessly on my PC, but there are quite a few GZ games that have frequent framerate dips. Selaco, for instance. Great game, pushes GZD to it's best, but a 2.5D game should not run so sluggishly, let alone a fast paced game.

Yup, GZ is not the best example when it comes to optimization, even the simpler things can drop the fps to a single-digit (for example Mirrors, or as I said before, the great use of Voxels). Not to say when you using a hiper detailed map (Lullaby as example). This is in part by the change of rendering (software to hardware), how it handles his features (again... VOXELS) and the other part how the developers optimize their games (Is known that for a long time Brutal Doom was badly unoptimized due the disastrous code)

[Scypek2]

42 minutes ago, Gez said:

Which are? 

 

Can we now have real horizontally moving sectors in GZDoom, like all those trains in Build? I've seen something like it done with portals before, but that was a prototype.

 

Other than that, I don't think EDuke has much else going for it (besides performance, which I don't know much about). Flat sprites used to be a Build-specific feature I really liked, but now they're in GZDoom too apparently!

[Redneckerz]

24 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

 

I know this might be a controversial question, but what about performance? Ion Fury runs flawlessly on my PC, but there are quite a few GZ games that have frequent framerate dips. Selaco, for instance. Great game, pushes GZD to it's best, but a 2.5D game should not run so sluggishly, let alone a fast paced game.

Selaco being 2.5D has nothing to do with its performance.

 

What Selaco does however is exploiting the more higher end features of GZ - Models, post-processing, and the like. As we are still talking about semi-modern effects tacked onto a renderer that needs to consider the Doom rendering scheme, too much of something will cause it to buckle.

 

The same happens with extreme linedefs counts. There is a reason why a madlad project like Helion exists, to remove those static issues inherent to Doom (By not using its renderer at all)

[7Mahonin]

In my experience I’ve had no issue using EDuke32 or Mapster32. Mapster32 felt like a smooth transition from using BUILD back in the day. Doombuilder and its various versions feel nothing like the Doom level editors of yesteryear, which were more like BUILD in some ways in how they looked and felt. I would say from this alone, GZDoom has helped shape the utilities used for designing WADs to make them more accessible, while Mapster32 seems more geared towards those who are already familiar with BUILD or are willing to learn it. Mapster32 has a steeper learning curve, sure, it uses the keyboard a lot more than Doombuilder, sure, but if someone is determined they will easily figure it out. 

Edited November 14, 2022 by 7Mahonin

[D4NUK1]

Gzdoom by reallly really a lot. 

 

Many things on Eduke are really still made possible by hacks and duck tape code. 

 

Where in GZDoom are better accessibility, creations more impressive games and great compatibility with newer hardware. Unleashing more potential. 

 

 

If Eduke32 would be more updated to newer stuff or more easy-to-use modes, would be still a great option, but rigth now it's Eduke if you want a really in spirit build game, or GZDoom if you want any type of game that can be done in the engine ( even a resident evil and Mario kart are possible). 

[D4NUK1]

21 minutes ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Yup, GZ is not the best example when it comes to optimization, even the simpler things can drop the fps to a single-digit (for example Mirrors, or as I said before, the great use of Voxels). Not to say when you using a hiper detailed map (Lullaby as example). This is in part by the change of rendering (software to hardware), how it handles his features (again... VOXELS) and the other part how the developers optimize their games (Is known that for a long time Brutal Doom was badly unoptimized due the disastrous code)

 

We need to also know that Gzdoom are pushing the hardware so need like a hardwares that's compatible with their options, like OpenGL4 or Vulkan, many of them being not used by some users on the community (like me in the past). So i would be playing on sub-par specs without knowing the reason was my hardware all along. 

[Kinsie]

In all seriousness, the BUILD features that have yet to make the jump to GZDoom are primarily moving sectors (trains etc.) and dynamically-changing slopes. The former of those can be kinda-sorta faked with portals, but there's a lot of limitations and weirdness. It'd be nice to have "real" moving sectors, but the square collision boxes on Doom actors makes sorting out rotations a much messier problem... One solution proposed was to have them only be able to move in the four cardinal directions...

 

The latter, I forget what the blocker is. I think it might be physics weirdness?

[Metal_Slayer]

Both engines support 3D models and 3D geometry, so if consider them 2.5D you could say Unity, UE4 and many others also are 2.5D engines if you want them to be.

[Trar]

47 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

Whoever picked "other", show yourselves.

They're Quake fans, obviously

[jmpt16]

9 minutes ago, Metal_Slayer said:

Both engines support 3D models and 3D geometry, so if consider them 2.5D you could say Unity, UE4 and many others also are 2.5D engines if you want them to be.

 

True, but most games don't use such features, so usually, they're 2.5D

[dasho]

54 minutes ago, jmpt16 said:

Whoever picked "other", show yourselves.

 

You rang?

[jmpt16]

1 minute ago, dasho said:

 

You rang?

 

No GZDoom, no Eduke, what's the best 2.5D engine then? (inb4 Edge)

[dasho]

Just now, jmpt16 said:

 

No GZDoom, no Eduke, what's the best 2.5D engine then? (inb4 Edge)

 

thats_the_joke.png

[Gez]

Quake is not a "2.5D engine", though. It's fully 3D. Same for Descent, or Terminator Future Shock/SkyNET.

 

For competition in the 2.5D category, I'd say... Dark Forces/Outlaw. It's got the same basic design as Build (portal-based), but with the fun addition of a full 3D polygon renderer that is added on top (quite literally) to allow to add some simple 3D models to a scene. The mouse bots and the Moldy Crow use it. Its modern "port" would be @lucius's Force Engine.

 

Honorable mention include the Raven/STEAM engine (no modern ports), the Wolf 3D engine (ECWolf I guess) and... I can't really think of another at the moment.

[jmpt16]

Just now, dasho said:

 

thats_the_joke.png

 

i_know_lol.wav

[jmpt16]

Just now, Gez said:

Quake is not a "2.5D engine", though. It's fully 3D.

 

I believe Trar was joking.

 

5 minutes ago, Gez said:

the Wolf 3D engine (ECWolf I guess)

 

I don't want to bring the "Doom isn't actually 3D" argument, but I don't think Wolfenstein is a 2.5D game. There's no height, no Z-axis.

ROTT might be a fitting replacement tho.