Do you think GZDoom should have texture filtering on by default?

[Mr Masker]

I can't wait for when the two factions start brawling. It'll be like the Great War of Doomworld, but way less exciting than that description.

[Scuba Steve]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

...why are you all so worried about what other players might like or not?

As an artist, I'd prefer players interact with my work based on the criteria I have set. They can then critique my art based on the way it was intended to be experienced instead of lodging meaningless criticism based on an incompatible user setting. I've seen people play levels with the tonemaps ramped up to ridiculous levels and then complain that they "can't see anything" or dynamics lights disabled and argue the lighting in the map is too flat. Or god forbid the players who load up a custom gameplay mod and try to critique the experience. If you're choosing to engage with my work, I want that interaction to be on my terms.

[Lobo]

As a fellow modder, I can understand that you want your work to be experienced as you intended it.

But realistically, the best we can do is just recommend the settings: folks will take heed or just change it to whatever they want anyway.

[Bauul]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

Right. Worried about what other players will do or think.

 

Just to confirm, a factor in this is that a lot of us here are mappers and modders, so the default settings don't just impact other people experiencing the base game, they impact how they experience the content we create too.

 

For example, just ask Ukiro how he feels about people playing Otex levels, and seeing texture filtering spoil his decades of careful pixel-art, simply because a player didn't know that texture filtering is not how Doom assets are designed, or that they can turn it off.

 

(To confirm, this is not the same as someone knowingly choosing to play with texture filtering (each to their own), it's about new players not realizing that Doom assets are not designed with texture filtering in mind. It's about education, not preference).

 

Edit: Exactly what Scuba Steve said!

Edited July 3, 2023 by Bauul

[Noiser]

52 minutes ago, ebrl said:

Texture filtering makes everything so godawful ugly that I don't even feel like engaging in a serious argument about it with anyone who, for whatever unexplainable reason, honestly claims to prefer it. I don't think it's matter of "taste" or "opinions", I don't think this should be an argument in the first place, it's impossible for me to even attempt to understand what kind of weird stuff is going on with their brains that causes them to not have a strong, visceral reaction against it. It's objectively terrible. 

It is taste, people have different reasons to like stuff. I may not like the filtering as well (and I don't think it should be the default option), but a lot of people also don't like the original 320x200 resolution, for example. And guess what? I love to play on low resolution because I like the fog of pixels. While the discussion around GZDoom is relevant, let's try to not shame anyone because of it.

I think a more valid argument is what the artistic vision of the mapper. It's supposed to be clean? Filtered? With software or hardware look? It would be great if the one responsible by the aesthetics of the map had more control about it on mapinfo, at least as an alternative. Like an "automatic" option that changes from map to map. If the player don't like it they could disable that feature, choosing fixed settings instead. That way everyone would be happy I guess.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Noiser

[ebrl]

56 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Not very veiled attack against me: might as well just call me names straight out.

 

Guess my having a different opinion really gets your juices flowing.

It wasn't a "veiled attack", you're the one making everything personal. Not to mention that dismissing the entire discussion as "worrying about what others think" is massively disrespectful, because it implies our opinion isn't really personal but merely something akin to conformity. You're not special for thinking different, you're not special for not having a strong feeling one way or another, so stop baiting, and stop thinking this discussion is somehow about you.

 

 

18 minutes ago, Noiser said:

I think a more valid argument is what the artistic vision of the mapper. It's supposed to be clean? Filtered? With software or hardware look? It would be great if the one responsible by the aesthetics of the map had more control about it on mapinfo, at least as an alternative. Like an "automatic" option that changes from map to map. If the player don't like it they could disable that feature, choosing fixed settings instead. That way everyone would be happy I guess.

Call me a radical, but I think the author can be wrong. There's obviously a lot of room for artistic vision but I'm willing to draw a line at texture filtering - at least in the standards presented by the GZDoom defaults.

Edited July 3, 2023 by ebrl

[dpJudas]

1 hour ago, Bauul said:

 

Thanks for the context! The bits and pieces I had picked up from various disparate Discord conversations gave the impression a primary goal of VKDoom was to be a better base for indie development, but it sounds like that's more just a possible byproduct of it being a fork that has a more modern renderer.

 

It is all in the eye of the beholder. :)

 

Nash likes to see it as being a better base for indie development (he is using it for Disdain). To me it is a Doom source port with focus on modern computers.

[Doomy__Doom]

1 hour ago, Bauul said:

For example, just ask Ukiro how he feels about people playing Otex levels, and seeing texture filtering spoil his decades of careful pixel-art, simply because a player didn't know that texture filtering is not how Doom assets are designed, or that they can turn it off.

Allow me to take a trip down the otex-related memory lane for a bit as the uhh "recipient" of art :)

 

I came to classic-doom-as-a-hobby roughly around the time Eviternity dropped. A bit earlier, but not really important. Mostly played iwads and I believe Plutonia 2 (because it's plutonia, duh!) in DOSBox. Prior to that I also only ever played in dosbox occasionally.

 

So, somehow I learned of Eviternity and decided it looks cool. And played it like this:

 

Guess the port?

Spoiler

glboom-plus.exe 2.5.1.4 on defaults except resolution

Did I have fun? Absolutely. Tons of it. Even recorded a full UV-fast playlist (before DSDA was filled with actually good demos). Did it ruin my experience? Nope, not at all. Eventually I got bothered by soapyness, learned more and understood the why's, but for the noob me back then it was perfectly fine and did not affect enjoyment much if at all.

 

EDIT: I guess the point I'm trying to make is "don't stress about players having badwrongfun". Just the "fun" part is important.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Doomy__Doom

[Xaser]

Something to keep in mind here: most of us in this thread are "power users". We know what options to expect in a source port, how to change settings if we don't like what we see, and all that good business. Someone who is playing Doom for the first time ever (or hasn't touched it in years) who wants to install GZDoom to check out that cool map about a house won't know that there's an option to change things and might stumble into a sub-par experience. The whole reason many of us are adamant about the defaults being set "correctly" is precisely to cover the bases for folks who won't know the option is there -- most of which I'd wager would actually much rather have the filtering off (see the poll, and the general trend with retro games as a whole). Though now I'm repeating myself.

 

It's the same sort of principle behind why MAPINFO options like "nocrouch" or "nojump" exist -- a casual user might not know that they can't jump and will accidentally use it to sequence break the map; a power user will know they ought not to because they're playing a vanilla wad, and they can even flip the option that lets them jump anyway, because they know it's there.

 

Alllll that said, check out this other thread about presets -- that's the most practical resolution here, and there's some great suggestions in the OP.

[Herr Dethnout]

2 hours ago, ebrl said:

Texture filtering makes everything so godawful ugly that I don't even feel like engaging in a serious argument about it with anyone who, for whatever unexplainable reason, honestly claims to prefer it. I don't think it's matter of "taste" or "opinions", I don't think this should be an argument in the first place, it's impossible for me to even attempt to understand what kind of weird stuff is going on with their brains that causes them to not have a strong, visceral reaction against it. It's objectively terrible. It's like you're wearing someone else's glasses. I refuse to believe anyone actually prefers it - for my own sanity, I like to believe that this "preference" is simply a complete indifference because they think Doom is just an old and ugly game that is supposed to look old and ugly and they don't really care what brand of old and ugly it is.

I think it depends on the game, as a lot of people said, sine games where designed with filtering in mind Ocarina of Time, Half-Life are some examples that you can take advantage of the filtering to enhance the textures (in fact, OoT looks like shit without it). I will say that most full 3d games looks great with filters on textures, but Doom is different, not only the game wasn't made for it, also it uses a lot of pixel art rather than 3d models, giving a blurred image that looks disgusting a pretty unprofesional.

 

That said, I actually like the filtering when using none (trilinear), is like the perfect balance between enhancing the view at far distance is ad giving they good crisp pixelated look in near distance.

[Darkcrafter07]

6 hours ago, ebrl said:

Texture filtering makes everything so godawful ugly that I don't even feel like engaging in a serious argument about it with anyone who, for whatever unexplainable reason, honestly claims to prefer it. I don't think it's matter of "taste" or "opinions", I don't think this should be an argument in the first place, it's impossible for me to even attempt to understand what kind of weird stuff is going on with their brains that causes them to not have a strong, visceral reaction against it. It's objectively terrible. It's like you're wearing someone else's glasses. I refuse to believe anyone actually prefers it - for my own sanity, I like to believe that this "preference" is simply a complete indifference because they think Doom is just an old and ugly game that is supposed to look old and ugly and they don't really care what brand of old and ugly it is.

Maybe filtering by default is on due to another reason: high-resolution texture packs and "advanced" filtering like HQx, Scalex that were so popular at times, circa 2008. Linear filtering indeed adds some blur even if scaling ratios are not big, it's just a nature of the filter and you should compensate for it by some sharpening filters or increasing renderer resolutions. As of now you can easily hook up a reshade and install about 5 different sharpening filters that will suit many tastes and bring some piucture crispness in overall. The real issue here is that linear filtering doesn't work well for scaling up low-res stuff and since 1993 there are still no decent, widespread common standard HD texture packs that look faithful and consistent throughout all original Doom games, including monsters.

How about artists finally providing HD assets with their mods? It's 2023 and most computers made in the last 23 years allow making such content for everyone, it's simply the fact that they want to continue working like it's 1993 and making HD was severely limited by capabilities of computers of the time (i486-SX16, DOS, bad mouse, no digitizers, low-res scanners, 320x200 video cards, 15' CRT, old software). "oh, GZDoom is linear filtering by default" my shit works are definitely going to be looking shit this way and that's true, it just shows the actual quality.

[Shepardus]

43 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

How about artists finally providing HD assets with their mods? It's 2023 and most computers made in the last 23 years allow making such content for everyone, it's simply the fact that they want to continue working like it's 1993 and making HD was severely limited by capabilities of computers of the time (i486-SX16, DOS, bad mouse, no digitizers, low-res scanners, 320x200 video cards, 15' CRT, old software). "oh, GZDoom is linear filtering by default" my shit works are definitely going to be looking shit this way and that's true, it just shows the actual quality.

If you expect anyone to take your viewpoint seriously, maybe try not insulting their creative output. I shouldn't have to explain why not everyone works with HD assets any more than I should have to explain why we bother playing a 30 year old game instead of jumping ship to something more modern.

[indigotyrian]

1 hour ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

How about artists finally providing HD assets with their mods? It's 2023 and most computers made in the last 23 years allow making such content for everyone, it's simply the fact that they want to continue working like it's 1993 and making HD was severely limited by capabilities of computers of the time (i486-SX16, DOS, bad mouse, no digitizers, low-res scanners, 320x200 video cards, 15' CRT, old software). "oh, GZDoom is linear filtering by default" my shit works are definitely going to be looking shit this way and that's true, it just shows the actual quality.

 

You may want to open your eyes and take a look at the massive prevailing trend in video games over the past, oh I dunno, 15 years or so where large chunky pixels, low bit depth, and the distortions and low-fidelity that comes with such directions are seen as aesthetics to be enjoyed and celebrated, not decrepit relics of obsolete processes to be shunned in favor of New Shiny. I don't think I even need to list any specific titles (though the all-time highest grossing video game ever comes to mind), just maybe pay any sort of attention to the medium at all beyond the most basic Sonycore shit.

 

It occurs to me that most people who are interested in playing a 30 year old video game are okay with or, dig this, even appreciate Doom's original art and don't need vaseline smear on it in order to be convinced that it's Just Like A Real Video Game today or somesuch nonsense.

Edited July 4, 2023 by indigotyrian

[Darkcrafter07]

Game is being a game but visuals are a different story, there are lots of movies much older than Doom and some of them can be rescanned into 4K just because film physical properties allow it. Digital stuff can not be rescanned into higher resolutions because there is simply no additional "high frequency" information packed into such small frames and Doom is the same, if it can not be rescanned, it must be redrawn, just like StarCraft Remastered. It's just about laziness rather than trends or technical limitations.

[ETPC]

4 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

Game is being a game but visuals are a different story, there are lots of movies much older than Doom and some of them can be rescanned into 4K just because film physical properties allow it. Digital stuff can not be rescanned into higher resolutions because there is simply no additional "high frequency" information packed into such small frames and Doom is the same, if it can not be rescanned, it must be redrawn, just like StarCraft Remastered. It's just about laziness rather than trends or technical limitations.

 

calling game devs/modders lazy invalidates everything you are saying.

[indigotyrian]

9 minutes ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

Game is being a game but visuals are a different story, there are lots of movies much older than Doom and some of them can be rescanned into 4K just because film physical properties allow it. Digital stuff can not be rescanned into higher resolutions because there is simply no additional "high frequency" information packed into such small frames and Doom is the same, if it can not be rescanned, it must be redrawn, just like StarCraft Remastered. It's just about laziness rather than trends or technical limitations.

 

Ah, yes, Ukiro, Hakros, Cage, everyone on the Zdoom forums, about 98% of GZDoom modders are simply making low-res assets for Doom modding because they're lazy, not because they're deliberately targeting a specific aesthetic. Jesus H Christ.

Edited July 4, 2023 by indigotyrian

[Herr Dethnout]

1 hour ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

How about artists finally providing HD assets with their mods? It's 2023 and most computers made in the last 23 years allow making such content for everyone, it's simply the fact that they want to continue working like it's 1993 and making HD was severely limited by capabilities of computers of the time (i486-SX16, DOS, bad mouse, no digitizers, low-res scanners, 320x200 video cards, 15' CRT, old software). "oh, GZDoom is linear filtering by default" my shit works are definitely going to be looking shit this way and that's true, it just shows the actual quality.

That's a complete no sense... wtf

[Darkcrafter07]

20 minutes ago, indigotyrian said:

 

Ah, yes, Ukiro, Hakros, Cage, everyone on the Zdoom forums, about 98% of GZDoom modders are simply making low-res assets for Doom modding because they're lazy, not because they're deliberately targeting a specific aesthetic. Jesus H Christ.

 

Instead of creating such a drama post on Doomworld you guys could go here: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewforum.php?f=15 and suggest a feature that would allow your low-res mods to enable nearest-neighbor.

 

Another way: write it in readme that your game was intented to be played without filtering.

[Girzedda]

put some shitty low quality jpeg compression on the sprites, and the filtering will look better.

[Bridgeburner56]

1 hour ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

Game is being a game but visuals are a different story, there are lots of movies much older than Doom and some of them can be rescanned into 4K just because film physical properties allow it. Digital stuff can not be rescanned into higher resolutions because there is simply no additional "high frequency" information packed into such small frames and Doom is the same, if it can not be rescanned, it must be redrawn, just like StarCraft Remastered. It's just about laziness rather than trends or technical limitations.

Make them yourself if it's so easy. Otherwise shut up and let creators make what they want

[Professor Hastig]

Why is it that the way this thread is going scarily mirrors modern politics, i.e. "I am right and everybody else is wrong. So let's continue shouting until the opposition gives in and we claim victory"? I've seen that from both the right and the left, not only in America, and the overall climate it creates is utterly depressing. Especially the attacks on Lobo were totally uncalled for. He just expressed his opinion and unsurprisingly got ganged up by the more rabid faction.

 

It seems nobody here is interested in constructive discourse that leads to an outcome everybody can be happy with. I am deeply concerned that the only thing this will leave us with is a port without a lead developer because what sane person would want to contend with some of the things having been said here?

 

[TasAcri]

3 hours ago, indigotyrian said:

 

You may want to open your eyes and take a look at the massive prevailing trend in video games over the past, oh I dunno, 15 years or so where large chunky pixels, low bit depth, and the distortions and low-fidelity that comes with such directions are seen as aesthetics to be enjoyed and celebrated, not decrepit relics of obsolete processes to be shunned in favor of New Shiny.

 

The funny thing about this trend is how it's based on old console pixel art games most of the time... And those games NEEDED the TV CRT display quirks to show the art as the artists intended. And that includes things like blurring, color blending, etc. Not to mention the vast majority of players used RF or Composite cables. The artists knew these things and took advantage of them to blend more fake colors, fake transparencies, fake gradients, and more.

 

So the low-res CRT display is like the final layer for those graphics to be displayed correctly. These games were not supposed to be the sharp, raw pixels you usually see in those modern "retro" games or in most emulators. If you do this on the actual old games you are literally missing visual effects and extra colors that need to be there. And although a simple bilinear filtering isn't exactly enough (you really need a good CRT shader) it's still closer to the intended look than raw pixels.

 

In addition, CRT blending/blurring makes everything look more "rounded" and natural like so:
 

 

 

Unlike DOOM, i think the filtered version looks a lot better.

 

Doom is not affected by any of this since it's a PC game and PCs had HD monitors with superior clarity. Also, good CRT shaders like the above don't filter the games in the same way GZDoom does, you can still play the console ports of DOOM with all the chunky pixels, like god intended.

Edited July 4, 2023 by TasAcri

[roadworx]

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

Why is it that the way this thread is going scarily mirrors modern politics, i.e. "I am right and everybody else is wrong. So let's continue shouting until the opposition gives in and we claim victory"? I've seen that from both the right and the left, not only in America, and the overall climate it creates is utterly depressing. Especially the attacks on Lobo were totally uncalled for. He just expressed his opinion and unsurprisingly got ganged up by the more rabid faction.

 

It seems nobody here is interested in constructive discourse that leads to an outcome everybody can be happy with. I am deeply concerned that the only thing this will leave us with is a port without a lead developer because what sane person would want to contend with some of the things having been said here?

lmfao what

 

why are you bringing politics into this? the internet has always been filled with people bickering about shit in a hostile, unproductive manner, not to mention that it's far from the first time discussions like this have happened on doomworld. honestly, this is incredibly mild compared to actual drama that has happened in the past. i don't mean to be a condescending asshole when saying this - this is a question born out of legitimate curiosity - but is this the first forum you've ever been on?

 

also, graf has a much thicker skin than you think. probably too thick, considering his habit of not listening to people. either way, far worse has been said about him, yet he's been the lead dev for years and will probably continue to be so for many more to come.

Edited July 4, 2023 by roadworx

[Herr Dethnout]

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

Why is it that the way this thread is going scarily mirrors modern politics, i.e. "I am right and everybody else is wrong. So let's continue shouting until the opposition gives in and we claim victory"? I've seen that from both the right and the left, not only in America, and the overall climate it creates is utterly depressing. Especially the attacks on Lobo were totally uncalled for. He just expressed his opinion and unsurprisingly got ganged up by the more rabid faction.

 

It seems nobody here is interested in constructive discourse that leads to an outcome everybody can be happy with. I am deeply concerned that the only thing this will leave us with is a port without a lead developer because what sane person would want to contend with some of the things having been said here?

 

This is what we call “Overreacting”

 

14 minutes ago, roadworx said:

also, graf has a much thicker skin than you think. probably too thick, considering his habit of not listening to people. either way, far worse has been said about him, yet he's been the lead dev for years and will probably continue to be so for many more to come.

That's something that respect from him, being able to support all the drama he was involved in the past and all thing happening with this poll... That's actualis pretty impressive.

[RataUnderground]

About working with HD assets...
Let's suppose I create a texture set with four times the standard resolution. To be sufficiently versatile I will need around 50 textures at least because to maintain visual coherence I can't use any of the standard iwad textures.
Once the work is done, I can't just copy them to a wad and use them as if they were normal textures. I have to create a TEXTURES lump where their size is defined. And this lump will only work in GzDoom, excluding much of my audience.
But there is more. It turns out that sprites are also visually inconsistent with HD textures, so I have to create HD sprites for all monsters, items, weapons and effects. And they have to be animated. And it turns out that in HD style animations require more frames than pixel art sprites to look natural.

Doom is not ready to use HD assets and you have to force it. It's not laziness, it's just not the right engine.

[Ozcar]

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

Why is it that the way this thread is going scarily mirrors modern politics, i.e. "I am right and everybody else is wrong. So let's continue shouting until the opposition gives in and we claim victory"? I've seen that from both the right and the left, not only in America, and the overall climate it creates is utterly depressing. Especially the attacks on Lobo were totally uncalled for. He just expressed his opinion and unsurprisingly got ganged up by the more rabid faction.

 

It seems nobody here is interested in constructive discourse that leads to an outcome everybody can be happy with. I am deeply concerned that the only thing this will leave us with is a port without a lead developer because what sane person would want to contend with some of the things having been said here?

 

What does politics have to do with this thread?

[Professor Hastig]

16 minutes ago, roadworx said:

 

also, graf has a much thicker skin than you think. probably too thick, considering his habit of not listening to people. either way, far worse has been said about him, yet he's been the lead dev for years and will probably continue to be so for many more to come.

 

Wow, that's some truly enlightened attitude. "The guy seems to be unaffected by our abuse, so let's just continue". Don't tell me again that current politics haven't 'borrowed' that kind of behavior from the more bottom feeding parts of the internet. I'm just as surprised that he has tolerated it for this long, but I think it's a grievous error in thinking to assume that it will continue.

 

1 minute ago, Ozcar said:

What does politics have to do with this thread?

 

Nothing directly, just the same means to wear down the opposition.

 

[Kinsie]

18 hours ago, Nash said:

Something that I have always wanted to submit to GZDoom is something similar to the FTEQW source port -

 

Upon launching GZDoom for the first time, a presets menu will pop up, with presets like "classic", "modern", perhaps a couple of others in between. Classic will, of course, do stuff like no texture filtering, maybe set the transparency mode to vanilla, etc.

 

This at least gives new users a quick setup experience.

I think this presets menu will be the best "in the middle" solution that keeps everyone satisfied.

I've argued for this recently and gotten, shall we say, mixed responses from fellow community members outside of the GZDoom dev team. Who knew that the concept of first-startup wizards generated such a visceral response?

 

It still seems like a fair way to do it IMHO, especially if it was disabled if game_support.pk3 wasn't present so standalone games didn't get clobbered with it. They can define their own defaults!

 

17 hours ago, Jakub Majewski said:

I wonder, that if GZDoom were to collect info about its uers, including what settings they play on, perhaps the developers would learn that a large amount of players prefer to turn some of the default settings off...

 

But It's pretty likely, that having GZDoom do a data survey like that in the background would not sit well with a lot of people... people aren't too fond of spyware(even if they use it daily). Maybe I'm wrong though.

GZDoom has done (well signposted, with opt-outs) telemetry-based surveys in the past to collect some anonymized, generalized information about hardware configurations and operating systems so as to better know what system configs to focus support on, so this isn't impossible. User settings by their very nature are a bit less generalized and anonymous though, so that might be taking things a little too far for the taste of the people who run such things.

 

EDIT: also @Professor Hastig if you compare the 237th iteration of an ongoing internet argument about video settings to real world politics one more time i will personally pass the hat around to crowdfund you a field trip down to the local park so you can touch some grass

Edited July 4, 2023 by Kinsie

[roadworx]

5 minutes ago, Herr Dethnout said:

That's something that respect from him, being able to support all the drama he was involved in the past and all thing happening with this poll... That's actualis pretty impressive.

it's probably the natural result of being the lead dev on such a well-known project

 

1 minute ago, Professor Hastig said:

 

Wow, that's some truly enlightened attitude. "The guy seems to be unaffected by our abuse, so let's just continue". Don't tell me again that current politics haven't 'borrowed' that kind of behavior from the more bottom feeding parts of the internet. I'm just as surprised that he has tolerated it for this long, but I think it's a grievous error in thinking to assume that it will continue.

okay, but this thread is, again, extremely mild compared to stuff in the past. i understand the concern, but i just went through the thread and literally the only person actually shitting on graf directly was me (which i probably shouldn't have done lol). the rest has been overall quite respectful, all things considered. just because there's a lot of criticism levied towards someone's decisions regarding a project doesn't make it "abuse"

[RDETalus]

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

Don't tell me again that current politics

It's not "current" politics whatsoever man, this sort of behavior has been with us humans since forever lol. Graf is a strong guy we all like and respect him, please don't get the wrong impression that we bear animosity towards him