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

[DRON12261]

(considering how much I've written here, and the fact that I'm not an English speaker, keep in mind that I may not have seen any inaccuracies in the translator)

I will duplicate my post from a neighboring thread, which is very close to the current discussion.
 

Quote

It just must look the same as the original doom. Because the vast majority of wads have been created, are being created now, and will continue to be created to match the visuals of the original Doom.
 

It's imperative that the default lighting is set correctly, because it's fundamental to rendering and what many maps rely on in their design (no more default Doom or Dark lighting modes). 
 

Also highly desirable in general software rendering, if only because the hardware rendering can be unstable for some wads and can break them. Or at least the port should clearly (not somewhere in readme file) tell the player, "If you want to use conditional opengl or vulkan rendering, be aware of that there may be maps that will crash with it" or something along those lines.

And, of course, there may be things today that improve and complement, but don't change or break. I'm mean widescreen, increased frame rates and other such things - these are more of a necessity in this day and age.
 

A good example of a modern way to play doom is Woof! It also introduces a lot of new things and features, but it still doesn't break the original Doom experience. I can say the same for Doom Retro for example.
 

It's important that by default a source-port should definitely offer the player an original take on the game without interference, that's what a source-port should do by definition. And all additional features of the port, including those that could potentially break compatibility somewhere, the player should consciously enable it himself, because he wants it himself and no one is imposing their vision of someone else's game on him.

I respect what they have done in GZDoom for all time. But you should also understand that GZDoom got its popularity just not because of texture filtering, unadjusted rendering, etc. These are the very things that are a fly in the ointment. If I wasn't interested in this port I wouldn't have any other discussions with anyone on this topic, including Graf himself (although maybe our last discussion didn't go quite so well and ended in a dead end). But I really want this port to get rid of these problems and be better for all its users, especially for those who are new to Doom. All the more reason for it to get better at this point, it's not some technically insurmountable task. 

This is really a problem both for new players who just can't physically know how doom should look originally and they are likely to stumble upon GZDoom as the most famous port (and, notice again, famous just not for its default settings, etc., it has a number of other outstanding merits, which elevated it), and just for people who run another map, and it does not look the way its creator intended originally. It's fine when the player can play the way he wants, but in that case the player should exclusively self-consciously fine-tune the moments he wants to change, realizing that perhaps somehow this may not benefit the originally laid down game experience. In the first place should go settings proposed by the creator of the map / mod, as he, objectively, better to know with what his own creation can reveal itself fully and not break under some wrongly configured item. And only after that come the player's settings, if he really disagrees with something and consciously changes it himself to suit his own preferences.



I propose the following, based on the above:

- By default, many of the settings and especially the renderer should be set as close to the original doom as possible. I'm not talking about some 320x200 resolution or lock at 35 fps, no. I'm talking about, for example, properly configured lighting as it was done in the original doom. These are different settings like "Sector light mode - Software" (and I didn't find by the way how to file this option in MAPINFO in the documentation as I was told earlier, maybe I was looking in the wrong place), "Force Fake Contrast", "Tonemap mode - Palleted" and stuff like that. In GZDoom it is possible to set up a hardware renderer, so that it looks similar to the software renderer (not counting the technicalities of the software render implementation). If the player does not like something, he changes these things himself, consciously. To do this, it will be necessary to bring such options to the forefront in terms of accessibility in the settings menu, so that the user does not get lost in the huge number of settings. All this is necessary to avoid distorting the gaming experience on a huge number of wads made in the past, created right now and those that are still to be created in the future. GZDoom is not the final truth, dictating only its own rules, the truth in this regard is the original Doom, which in turn already under which most of the wads and created. And GZDoom, being a source-port, but not an original independent project, must maintain the authenticity of the product, on which it is based, i.e. the original Doom.

- To introduce the possibility of detailed rendering settings for creators of the wads/mods themselves. So that these settings can be stored in the file of the wad/mod and that they are automatically applied when you start the wad/mod itself during the game session with this mod (without changing the config player, a great example of this is how CVAR work in zandronum, subjected to changes through ACS). If the player, according to some of his preferences, will not radically like certain settings that the creator of the wad/mod offered him, then he should be able to change them back to his own. For this purpose, in the main menu or settings menu, an additional submenu " Launched Mods Settings" could be introduced, which would display a list of the settings touched by the author of the wad, which the user can change back to his own. This would allow you to see exactly what the author has touched the port settings, so that the player, if necessary, without digging into the port settings themselves, could very quickly change something to what he needs. All this is also to ensure that the original gameplay experience in the wad/mod is not distorted. Note that I'm not suggesting to force certain settings completely, here they are automatically applied, but if the player does not like something, he can consciously change it in his favor, understanding that this may also to some extent somewhere to play negatively with respect to the inherent game experience creator. Here we should also admit the fact that the conditional README.txt just doesn't work and most players still ignore it and don't attach importance to it, if they try to read it at all. It's a trivial human factor, whether you like it or not. It's cool if you, the one who reads it, does it, but you can't even imagine how many people don't, especially newbies.



It is important to understand that I am not offering a ready-made solution, I am only pointing out a certain vector, in which direction one could cast a glance. There are most likely nuances that should be further considered and changed, probably my proposal may not be optimal somewhere and someone may have a better idea. This issue could be more consciously addressed by the developers themselves and those who definitely understand a number of technical nuances of GZDoom, as they are more aware of those or other pitfalls in the implementation.

Another counterargument against statements along the lines of "If a player came through as it turned out, but was satisfied, then it was okay" Not really. The player was only able to get a small fraction of the intended game experience, which fortunately in this particular case was enough to satisfy him. But the experience was not a complete one, the player simply did not realize that his pastime could have been even richer and more comfortable. I've seen this happen more than once myself, when I suggest to some players to replay my map with a properly configured GZDoom or some other port that is more in line with the visuals of Doom and they tell me something like "yeah, really, I should have done that from the beginning".

This has also been mentioned here more than once, but let me remind you that it makes almost no difference whether a project is paid or not. From the moment an object of consumption becomes publicly available, there is always a certain amount of criticism or discussion. Moreover, various criticisms and feedback can be valuable for the creator. Especially when it is GZDoom, rightfully one of the most popular ports today, which itself is a bridge to Doom for many players.

Also, this is VERY important. Don't even dare take this whole text (and the vast majority of other posts in this thread) as "Another reason to hate GZDoom", I know that some people, possibly including the developers themselves, tend to see it that way. This is fundamentally wrong. This is first and foremost feedback, fixing certain problems and suggesting solutions. All of this can only help improve the port itself, if the developers listen to it all. Also, do not devalue these problems, the very fact that someone is talking about it and someone has faced it already has weight. Many people sitting here on the contrary are interested in making the port more usable, as they are directly the main part of its audience/consumers - those who play it all and those who create content for it all. The very fact that someone takes the time to point out and talk about some problem they encounter shows that they care about it all.

I also really hope that this thread will not devolve into an idle discussion for the sake of an idle discussion and that people will continue to post suggested ways to solve certain problems and in general to improve the port. And I really hope it all finally reaches the port developers themselves and they do give it some thought and take it into account. If there are developers reading this, please don't pass it by and try to reconsider some of your own views and take into account what your own users are talking about. Some points have been discussed and noted in the community for a very long time for a reason.

[Redneckerz]

4 hours 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.

This isn't modern politics. If you want to go that route, ill present you my politics which consists of endless debate and no outcome. Lets just not make comparisons - Its silly.

4 hours ago, Professor Hastig said:

It seems nobody here is interested in constructive discourse that leads to an outcome everybody can be happy with.

I think its very telling that the only useful posts in this thread come from power users:

• Scuba Steve
• Xaser x2
• Nash

Its like a blowing a vuvuzela and within that noise there is a tiny violin singing a song. And you expect a chicken to listen to that? Look at what it has to do in order to hear it.

[roadworx]

15 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

I think its very telling that the only useful posts in this thread come from power users:

• Scuba Steve
• Xaser x2
• Nash

Its like a blowing a vuvuzela and within that noise there is a tiny violin singing a song. And you expect a chicken to listen to that? Look at what it has to do in order to hear it.

that's just the nature of forums, idk what you expect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Redneckerz]

11 minutes ago, roadworx said:

that's just the nature of forums, idk what you expect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't want to speak for the Professor but i reckon that's what he was trying to tell. I just used a shitty analogy to explain it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Doom_Dude]

On 7/1/2023 at 1:14 AM, silentzorah said:

I didn't mind the texture filtering until I got a larger monitor.  Now I can't stomach it and turned it off.

 

 

That's probably what happened to me. I used to use texture filtering many ages ago. Now I can't stand it.

[indigotyrian]

8 hours ago, TasAcri said:

 

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.

 

My point isn't so much that people are deliberately chasing the "way retro games looked" but are rather adopting lo-fi rendering techniques as an aesthetic in and of themselves. No game has ever actually looked like Minecraft before Minecraft (no shut up about Infiniminer) and yet Minecraft's art direction deliberately uses chunky blocks, square-ish models, and low resolution.

[TasAcri]

47 minutes ago, indigotyrian said:

 

My point isn't so much that people are deliberately chasing the "way retro games looked" but are rather adopting lo-fi rendering techniques as an aesthetic in and of themselves. No game has ever actually looked like Minecraft before Minecraft (no shut up about Infiniminer) and yet Minecraft's art direction deliberately uses chunky blocks, square-ish models, and low resolution.

 

To be fair, Minecraft's low-fi visuals allows it to play the way it does. Hundreds of thousand of blocks that you can manipulate and build stuff with, with almost no limits other than your own patience and imagination. If the visuals had better fidelity, or the blocks where more detailed instead of basic cubes, it probably wouldn't be the same game at all. So it's not just aesthetics in this case i imagine. It's a visual style that allows this particular game to function.

Edited July 4, 2023 by TasAcri

[Ulukai]

21 minutes ago, TasAcri said:

 

To be fair, Minecraft's low-fi visuals allows it to play the way it does. Hundreds of thousand of blocks that you can manipulate and build stuff with, with almost no limits other than your own patience and imagination. If the visuals had better fidelity, or the blocks where more detailed instead of basic cubes, it probably wouldn't be the same game at all. So it's not just aesthetics in this case i imagine. It's a visual style that allows this particular game to function.

 

However Minecraft could have used more realistic or detailed textures instead of pixelated textures. It not only has a retro aesthetic due to the use of simple geometric figures, but also due to other details such as texturing.

[RDETalus]

27 minutes ago, TasAcri said:

It's a visual style

It's also because Notch isn't a great artist. Early Minecraft's visuals wasn't exactly a deliberate decision, but just a result of Notch's preference for fast asset creation.

If you look at the texture packs people create, it's totally possible to make very beautiful textures even in the original resolution.

Edited July 4, 2023 by RDETalus

[TasAcri]

3 minutes ago, Ulukai said:

 

However Minecraft could have used more realistic or detailed textures instead of pixelated textures. It not only has a retro aesthetic due to the use of simple geometric figures, but also due to other details such as texturing.

 

That's fair but, for the sake of argument, maybe detailed texturing would look out of place on such simple geometry? N64 games kinda feel that way some times when they are modded with HD textures.

 

[Mr Masker]

31 minutes ago, Ulukai said:

 

However Minecraft could have used more realistic or detailed textures instead of pixelated textures. It not only has a retro aesthetic due to the use of simple geometric figures, but also due to other details such as texturing.

Honestly if Minecraft had Realistic, Unreal Engine 4 (4K),1440p Textures it would've been way less appealing and not memorable at all. If I want a realistic looking survival game, there's many other options.

Edited July 4, 2023 by Mr Masker

[Ulukai]

49 minutes ago, TasAcri said:

 

That's fair but, for the sake of argument, maybe detailed texturing would look out of place on such simple geometry? N64 games kinda feel that way some times when they are modded with HD textures.

 

There are many texture packs with totally different styles. Some are more realistic, while others are more detailed by using higher resolution textures, but maintaining a funny or cartoon aesthetic, and it doesn't look bad in this game. Minecraft could have used another type of texture art with its cubic aesthetic perfectly.

The point is that games that use very pixelated textures show the pixelation, not hide the pixels using a blurry filter.

When we bought the first GPUs many years ago, seeing pixels seemed embarrassing, and blurry filters used to hide them. The filters were the novelty, a display of power and modern graphics. But those times are long gone. Now those pixels look nostalgic, we enjoy them, they are showed with pride and they are a great working base for thousands of retro-look indie games.

[docktorDoom]

If GZDoom were a source port mainly focused on the original Doom, I would have agreed with disabling texture filtering by default. However, since GZDoom is focused on adding features and not just being a source port but rather a multipurpose engine, it is not an easy decision.

 

An example that comes to mind right now is Total Chaos. If I remember correctly, it uses texture filtering, so changing the default to "nearest" would drastically alter its appearance. A complete list of GZDoom games with texture filtering set to "nearest" versus "on" would be perfect, as I believe this list should be researched. Perhaps I could do it in my spare time?

 

We should take into account that many players don't know what it does or even if it exists, or they do not even care.

 

I propose that GZDoom should detect if the gzdoom.ini file is not found and then checksum or verify the file name of the IWAD (DOOM/DOOM II/Heretic/Hexen) to set texture filtering to 'nearest' and light sector to 'legacy'.

Edited July 6, 2023 by docktorDoom
Gammar fixes. Sorry for my bad english.

[Gez]

On jeudi 6 juillet 2023 at 12:22 PM, docktorDoom said:

However, since GZDoom is focused on adding features and not just being a source port but rather a multipurpose engine, it is not an easy decision.

Graf has repeatedly said that the focus is still the original Doom engine games, the rest is extra.

 

Granted, this is usually in response to requests such as "let's completely ditch some essential part of Doom's game logic for something more modern instead", rather than for a pure aesthetic choice.

 

On jeudi 6 juillet 2023 at 12:22 PM, docktorDoom said:

and light sector to 'legacy'. 

Legacy is named after Doom Legacy. Specifically Doom Legacy v1.42's OpenGL renderer to be precise. IIRC it was added to play Phobia on GZDoom. It is absolutely not, in any way, shape, or form, intended as a general-purpose "looks like Doom" lighting mode.

 

The lighting modes intended to look like Doom are, in order of increasing accuracy, are "Dark" (approximating the Doom light dropoff), "Doom" (same + shader-based bright aura around the player), "software" (shader-based recreation of the ZDoom software renderer's look), and "vanilla" (shader-based recreation of vanilla Doom's renderer look). "Software" and "vanilla" are very very close to each other with only minor differences and are pretty much exact. "Doom" and "Dark" are much less precise and accurate since they were basically eyeballed until they looked right.

 

"Build" is the software/vanilla approach applied to the Build renderer, and exists in GZDoom mostly because then the code can be shared between both GZDoom and Raze and that's less maintenance work.

 

"Standard" and "bright" are not trying to replicate anything in particular. Standard is what GZDoom started with, before any other lighting mode was added. Bright is a brighter version of standard.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Gez

[Professor Hastig]

I find it a bit ironic that the texture filter gets such a heated response while the truly messy light mode selection is somewhat glossed over.

The way it is currently set up nobody will understand how to get it right.

I fully understand why the default is what it is (i.e. better performance) but even so this setting will confuse the hell out of most users, if they find and try to change it.
 

[docktorDoom]

57 minutes ago, Gez said:

Graf has repeatedly said that the focus is still the original Doom engine games, the rest is extra.

I'm just referencing the GZDoom github description: "GZDoom is a feature centric port for all Doom engine games".

 

Thanks for pointing my mistakes regarding the GZDoom light sectors. I've wrote this by heart in a laptop without GZDoom installed.

[Jayextee]

Texture filtering should be off by default, and while we're here the max decals should be set to zero because I'm personally sick of seeing beautiful levels with ugly black smears all over every wall there's been a firefight near. Grumble grumble grumble.

[Gez]

5 minutes ago, docktorDoom said:

I'm just referencing the GZDoom github description: "GZDoom is a feature centric port for all Doom engine games".

Easily 99% of all of the added features were added for player convenience or for making Doom II mods and maps. The stuff added specifically to support standalone games is just a drop in the bucket, and it happened organically along the way instead of being a deliberate design direction.

[Shepardus]

7 hours ago, Jayextee said:

Texture filtering should be off by default, and while we're here the max decals should be set to zero because I'm personally sick of seeing beautiful levels with ugly black smears all over every wall there's been a firefight near. Grumble grumble grumble.

I feel like disabling decals by default would lead to confusion from people over why their gore mods aren't working, but I agree that the default decals are ugly.

[banjiepixel]

2 hours ago, Shepardus said:

I feel like disabling decals by default would lead to confusion from people over why their gore mods aren't working, but I agree that the default decals are ugly.

 

Good, let them suffer!

 

But seriously, how about letting those gore mods to temporarily override the default setting and turn on decals automatically if they need decals?

Edited July 6, 2023 by banjiepixel

[Devalaous]

16 hours ago, Jayextee said:

Texture filtering should be off by default, and while we're here the max decals should be set to zero because I'm personally sick of seeing beautiful levels with ugly black smears all over every wall there's been a firefight near. Grumble grumble grumble.

 

I lost count of how many times I got stuck in a level because there was so much blood smeared on the nearby wall that it covered up a vital switch. Eventually I turned the setting down to zero and ive enjoyed the game much more since then. I used to think the decals were the coolest little detail ever eons ago, but now..

[Gez]

1 hour ago, Devalaous said:

so much blood smeared on the nearby wall that it covered up a vital switch

Never had that problem with the default decals. Only seen it with gore mods or stuff like Brutal Doom.

[Professor Hastig]

18 hours ago, Jayextee said:

Texture filtering should be off by default, and while we're here the max decals should be set to zero because I'm personally sick of seeing beautiful levels with ugly black smears all over every wall there's been a firefight near. Grumble grumble grumble.

 

I had the same experience. Some gore mods which do not know how to make translucent decals are particularly bad. The walls get plastered with opaque blood splats that hide everything beneath and logically spawn such ridiculous amounts of blood that it gets bad enough to obscure important items like switches.

 

To achieve that with the stock decals requires lots and lots of shooting in one single place.

 

 

 

[ZioMcCall]

21 hours ago, Gez said:

"Standard" and "bright" are not trying to replicate anything in particular. Standard is what GZDoom started with, before any other lighting mode was added. Bright is a brighter version of standard.

 
This explains why" Standard" looks very balanced compared the rest. Which make me wonder why Graf decided to make "Dark" the default one instead of keeping "Standard"

[Professor Hastig]

38 minutes ago, ZioMcCall said:

 
This explains why" Standard" looks very balanced compared the rest. Which make me wonder why Graf decided to make "Dark" the default one instead of keeping "Standard"

 

That's relatively easy to answer. Just compare it to the software renderer and you'll see which one looks closest.

What's called 'standard' is not even close to how Doom originally looks. It is merely 'standard' as being a standard issue linear ramp with run-of-the-mill fog settings that are also way off what Doom uses for depth fading.

 

This being a Doom port, after all, it should use the light settings closest to what the original has, and 'Dark' is as good as you could get without using shaders, apparently.

 

[Graf Zahl]

8 hours ago, ZioMcCall said:

Which make me wonder why Graf decided to make "Dark" the default one instead of keeping "Standard"

 

As has been said, because people correctly pointed out that the lighting formula was not correct. So what we did back then was tweak the values to get as closely as possible to the software renderer's lighting. Keep in mind this was in late 2005 when shaders were a distant dream so we had to make do with light and fog intensity and nothing else.

 

[Bauul]

17 hours ago, Devalaous said:

I lost count of how many times I got stuck in a level because there was so much blood smeared on the nearby wall that it covered up a vital switch.

 

Just a general PSA for any mappers: if you're mapping for UDMF, there's a flag to disable decals from appearing on selected lines.  Always turn it on for walls with switches on to prevent exactly this from happening.

[Devalaous]

16 hours ago, Gez said:

Never had that problem with the default decals. Only seen it with gore mods or stuff like Brutal Doom.

 

Yeah, it was probably Doom Expanded. I used that mod a lot for bumping up classic Doom mapsets. Ive started using it less though, as the mod will never be updated, and GZDoom keeps evolving. Some minor annoyances are starting to pop up, and I can only attribute it to updates making things no longer work as well.

[Lucius Wooding]

I think it should be off, what's the point of filtering if there are barely any pixels to filter? It's one thing if you were playing something with high res texture packs, or using the fancy stuff in the engine. I could see it fitting a lot better with a more realistic styled game, but Doom's assets really can't endure any more manipulation. And at the end of the day, despite all GZDoom's features it's still heavily Doom centric.

 

If we really had our shit together as a community, we'd default to CRT scanlines instead of the current filtering style. Now that would look classy.

[Gez]

1 hour ago, Lucius Wooding said:

If we really had our shit together as a community, we'd default to CRT scanlines instead of the current filtering style. Now that would look classy.

For console ports maybe; but Doom is a PC game.