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

[Professor Hastig]

28 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

We actually had to go back and redo how the menu was first shown, so it would instead force you to pick an option (default to all accessibility options on or off) to be able to close it, so users were forced to interact with the options and understand their user preferences. This seemed to resolve all (legitimate) complaints and the common question of "how do I make the UI look like Quake" has basically entirely vanished.

 

Knowing how the average user ticks, that's really the only way to go with initial game setup. If the user can actually skip a choice, most will do and then complain afterward.

 

[Shepardus]

6 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Does anyone wonder why Graf himself has not been in this thread? Its not like he was not tagged.

He was here a few pages ago, albeit talking about the light modes rather than texture filtering.

[Lippeth]

1 hour ago, LexiMax said:

I implemented that feature, in concert with the actual widescreen implementation.

  

Part of being a professional is delivering on time and on budget with the resources you're given, and this was the easiest way to deliver a relatively niche feature (that being 4:3 support in a port that is natively widescreen) in the context of a patch for a game that was already released and working.  I was juggling working on this port with my old day job, and the time that I could have spent implementing 4:3 in a nicer way instead went towards other features and fixes. 

 

My apologies, I didn't mean to tear down your work. I only bring up that example to illustrate how well implemented and lovingly even the most niche features are in many of these "little source port projects" when compared to a commercial port, and you indirectly bring up a great point that these fan ports are also unbound by time and budget constraints, not to mention that nearly anyone can potentially contribute features and fixes in most cases.

 

1 hour ago, LexiMax said:

Scuba Steve was the one who drew the widescreen versions of the title screens, by the way.

 

I know and he did a great job too. And so did Nash for the GZDoom WidePix for that matter, even if I rarely see them.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Lippeth

[FecalMystAche]

It’s almost as if the default settings are why there’s options and settings for the user to configure manually to fit their personal preferences. 

[Edward850]

1 minute ago, FecalMystAche said:

It’s almost as if the default settings are why there’s options and settings for the user to configure manually to fit their personal preferences. 

 

[FecalMystAche]

Just now, Edward850 said:

 

Then use a different port.

[Edward850]

2 minutes ago, FecalMystAche said:

Then use a different port.

I'm not repeating posting a link to the same post but know that it's the exact same response. Things are not about you or I.

[FecalMystAche]

Well, then I’m glad to not be the so called “average user” who is so inept they can’t tell the difference between how the game looks with texture filtering on/off and has no idea what the word “OPTIONS” means. While I agree that the default presentation should be what is most commonly used by the user base like you said- I do not believe it will ever happen with GZDoom as this seems to be a deliberate choice.

Edited July 12, 2023 by FecalMystAche

[Edward850]

Maybe you need to read my anecdote about Quake. Calling users stupid just because they don't know things exist is very short sighted of you. How can they know something exists if you don't tell them that it exists? You are running on knowledge that you already know before hand.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Edward850

[Noiser]

48 minutes ago, FecalMystAche said:

It’s almost as if the default settings are why there’s options and settings for the user to configure manually to fit their personal preferences. 

That's not the point. it's a bit difficult for casual players to know what they have to do in order to change these settings. Not because they are "inept", but because no one have the obligation to go through a tree of multiple options to search for a technical name they don't even know about (I know I would not, back then). Not only that, some people doesn't even know how the original game was supposed to look - and that creates a few issues, e.g. mappers who makes vanilla levels have to double their work just to accomodate their visuals on two different renderers (or have their artistic goal denied in one way or another).

I know it may look that way, but this is not a crusade against GZDoom. I love this port and the good amount of features it have. But sometimes is a bit frustrating to spend a huge amount of time fine tunning your map just to realize that most people will not even see it as it should be.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Noiser

[FecalMystAche]

I get what you mean, but I think no matter what there will always be casual users as well as mappers who are going to run into problems like what was described regardless of what GZDoom defaults to. 

Edited July 12, 2023 by FecalMystAche

[Professor Hastig]

It is completely impossible to make a default configuration that suits everybody.

 

We get the same discussion about keyboard layout which for non WASD users is often a mess to sort out because far too few games or engines have easy means to swap out an entire preset. And here it's a given that a significant percentage of people will not use WASD, it's quite unusable for left handed people or if you use a separate numpad for the directional keys and place it to the left of the main keyboard. I got used to the latter but so far haven't seen even one single game that offers a preset for such a setup. Most stick to WASD and force everybody else to manually set themselves up, a few have an alternative left-handed config - my guess is it's those where at least one developer is left handed - but no such luck for a right handed setup with separate numpad.

 

So the only option to go without pissing off anybody is to make a good initial quick setup that educates users about what they can change and actually forces them to make a decision.

 

[Gez]

22 minutes ago, Professor Hastig said:

or if you use a separate numpad for the directional keys and place it to the left of the main keyboard

I thought I was the only one to do this!

 

Though in fact it's not so much to the left as in front and rotated. I find this more ergonomic to have my arms like this / \ than like this |  |, when I can't use this configuration and have to use the main keyboard I just can't play for as long.

[TasAcri]

17 hours ago, banjiepixel said:

I am actually pretty surprised that GZDoom hasn't adopted system similar system as modern pc games have for their graphic settings, including presets. Lowest preset could be visually closest to vanilla as possible while th highest preset would have basically every possible visual effect that GZDoom comes with turned to the max. And of course there would be an ability to customize freely if presets don't fit to your needs. Not only this would be more familiar for modern pc gamers, it would satisfy very large number of players and they wouldn't need to take any deeper dive to the graphics settings.

 

I like the presets idea but not naming them "low" or "high". Because this way everyone will automatically just pick "high" thinking it's the "best looking" option.

Better names for presets would be "Original" and "Modern". This way the user knows it he chooses Modern it will look fancier but not as the original devs intended. At least they will be informed and maybe they will be curious to see the Original look.

 

Such presets exist in DOOM 64 CE btw.

[Professor Hastig]

41 minutes ago, Gez said:

I thought I was the only one to do this!

 

Though in fact it's not so much to the left as in front and rotated. I find this more ergonomic to have my arms like this / \ than like this |  |, when I can't use this configuration and have to use the main keyboard I just can't play for as long.

 

I got one for working on a laptop that doesn't have the numpad. I quickly realized that moving it to the left side of the keyboard was even better and it turned out to be quite convenient for gaming as well. :)

 

[RataUnderground]

This thread is like the morning star streaming its warm rays through my window every morning. When I wake up and see it again among the first on the forum, I feel at home.

Back on topic, I'm quite skeptical of the allegation that people outside the Doom community actually prefer the filter on. 
I've done a couple of polls on Mastodon and on Twitter. The vast majority of people who follow me don't play Doom or have anything to do with the community, they come to read my shitpost and occasionally appreciate my drawings. Once neutrally informed of what the filter looks like on and off, this is the result.




It's not a great sample, but it's not a Doomworld-biased sample either, which is what I wanted to show.

Wherever you do this survey in 2023 you are going to get a similar result, because this kind of filters in old games were a fad at the time that developers of different ports and emulators added to their software for the mere novelty.

Edited July 12, 2023 by RataUnderground

[banjiepixel]

5 hours ago, Lippeth said:

My apologies, I didn't mean to tear down your work. I only bring up that example to illustrate how well implemented and lovingly even the most niche features are in many of these "little source port projects" when compared to a commercial port, and you indirectly bring up a great point that these fan ports are also unbound by time and budget constraints, not to mention that nearly anyone can potentially contribute features and fixes in most cases.

 

This is exactly why we should have actually higher standards for hobbyist projects when it makes sense. GZDoom should be by all means better representation of Doom than any official release because they have basically infinite development time on their side and should generally also have closer emotional connection to the source material than your average software developer. It is important to take lessons from the official releases and aim to creating something that could directly replace them. There million ways to add something to have your own spin to things but the aim should be always preserving the core experience faithful to the source and how official releases are or should be without their flaws.

 

GZDoom has all the resources it needs to be universally the best Doom source port ever, issue lies with mismanagement of those resources and low quality standards of the GZDoom developers.

 

3 hours ago, TasAcri said:

Better names for presets would be "Original" and "Modern". This way the user knows it he chooses Modern it will look fancier but not as the original devs intended. At least they will be informed and maybe they will be curious to see the Original look.

 

Or it could be a "retroness slider". I mean technically the whole point would be to turn on or off modern advanced graphical features, with the middle setting being basically a balanced visual look between retro and modern. But should be noted that the term "modern" does imply that it is how Doom should look in modern day and obviously it would be far from how modern classic Doom actually officially looks like. Something like "Advanced" or "Fancy Effects" would probably be more neutral and communicate better that we are talking about extra features on top of the original experience.

 

GZDoom does generally bad job at communicating to the player what the limits of actual Doom engine are and what features are either from Hexen engine or completely new stuff created by the fan community.  I think it is a issue that needs to addressed instead of just ignoring it saying "Lol, they didn't just do the research!" when people have many historical misconceptions about Doom that are beiing caused by GZDoom. Doom has already historically hard time because it predates and lacks so many things that Duke Nukem 3D and Quake made standard FPS features.

 

1 hour ago, RataUnderground said:

Back on topic, I'm quite skeptical of the allegation that people outside the Doom community actually prefer the filter on.

 

It is important to question why opinion of someone outside the Doom community even matters. Opinion of a speedrunner usually has more value than opinion of a very casual player. Closer we are to the game and know it inside out, more we should be the ones that set the standard. And the same trend of texture filtering pixel art being seen as bad is very common opinion among other communities that play alot of pixel art games. Even something like CRT filters that often make more sense are not very popular and are basically never the default setting.

 

The "it is easy to turn off" also goes both ways and since the end result of someone outside of Doom community not knowing how to turn on the texture filtering is to them getting more accurate Doom experience, there are clearly always more positives to texture filtering being off by default. It is a tiny extra step to the direction of the accuracy to the source material by the developer of a publicly available and extremely popular source port because creator doesn't want to be reasonable and prioritize the common good over a personal preference.

Edited July 12, 2023 by banjiepixel

[RataUnderground]

3 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

It is important to question why opinion of someone outside the Doom community even matters. Opinion of a speedrunner usually has more value than opinion of a very casual player.

>A speedrunner's opinion
>GzDoom

C'mon.
 

10 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

 

Even something like CRT filters that often make more sense are not very popular and are basically never the default setting.

 

 
No. As I said earlier, the CRT PC monitors of the 1990s displayed a crisp, clear image. The PC is a work platform, they had to read text and excel tables.
The CRT filters that some modern emulators use mimic CRT TVs, which are a different thing and make no sense in a Doom port.
 

[aRottenKomquat]

6 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Anecdotally, when we originally pushed the accessibility options for Quake there was a lot of confusion around the alternate UI style being the default. Users were shown the accessibility menu up front (upon opening the main menu, if you hadn't seen the accessibility options yet it automatically presented it to you) but thought nothing of it and closed the menu, then they complained about the UI style and didn't seem to look or even notice the accessibility options were there despite them even being shown the options.

We actually had to go back and redo how the menu was first shown, so it would instead force you to pick an option (default to all accessibility options on or off) to be able to close it, so users were forced to interact with the options and understand their user preferences. This seemed to resolve all (legitimate) complaints and the common question of "how do I make the UI look like Quake" has basically entirely vanished.

 

This reminds me of a story from my previous job. I'd developed some UI to create and print mailing labels from our product. However, there was a setting you had to change in your printer options first, otherwise the labels wouldn't line up. Given the framework of this application (browser-based with no local system access), there was zero possibility for the app adjusting that setting itself. So I put in a dialog that showed up when you triggered this feature, giving you instructions on what exactly you needed to change before you continued. Then you'd click the "Okay, I made the changes" button and it would generate the mailing label sheet which you could print.

 

The thing is, it didn't work. People saw the dialog and dismissed it without reading, then submitted bug reports and support requests to fix the mailing labels feature because they didn't print correctly. The funniest part was when my manager told me, "Hey, I found out the mailing labels don't line up unless you go into printer settings and change this setting first. Can you please put in some kind of pop-up dialog telling users they need to change that before they print?" Yeah, he literally asked me to develop a dialog box that already exists which he also had completely ignored.

[TasAcri]

2 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

Back on topic, I'm quite skeptical of the allegation that people outside the Doom community actually prefer the filter on.

 

Ι never believed the claim that casual players or the non-DOOM community prefers the filtered graphics either. It's not like anyone ever asked them. Most just played with whatever they were given (AKA, the defaults). But just because they didn't have a problem with the defaults or didn't bother to change them doesn't mean it's because they prefer them this way. It's because they don't care enough to bother changing them.

 

 

1 hour ago, banjiepixel said:

And the same trend of texture filtering pixel art being seen as bad is very common opinion among other communities that play alot of pixel art games. Even something like CRT filters that often make more sense are not very popular and are basically never the default setting.

 

Old 8/16 bit console games were made with those CRT filters in mind. The art was made in such way that it's only "complete" with that specific layer. There were all sorts of tricks developers did to fake more colors and transparencies using the CRT blending. Not having the CRT shaders means that you are missing some things the developers intended.

 

Also, more importantly, CRT shaders are NOT the same thing as texture filtering. DOOM on consoles won't look like the texture filtered GZDoom crap if you play with a good CRT shader. It's still the same chunky pixellated game. Same with all PS1 games, CRT shaders don't filter the textures themselves.

Edited July 12, 2023 by TasAcri

[Herr Dethnout]

2 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

It's not a great sample, but it's not a Doomworld-biased sample either, which is what I wanted to show.

Well you made a poll of 123 people (combining Mastodon and Twitter resulta) and gives an almost unanimous answer. I think is a great sample of how non-doomworld people thinks about it.

 

Also, I love the fact that in Mastodon they poll is on English, but in Twitter is on Spanish :P

[RataUnderground]

4 minutes ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Well you made a poll of 123 people (combining Mastodon and Twitter resulta) and gives an almost unanimous answer. I think is a great sample of how non-doomworld people thinks about it.

 

Also, I love the fact that in Mastodon they poll is on English, but in Twitter is on Spanish :P

It's because my Mastodon account is a decade younger, and also the hagstags ensure a more homogeneous visibility among people from very different countries. On twitter I know that 99% of my audience speaks Spanish, on Mastodon it's better if I use a more universal language.
Mastodon is cool, I encourage you all to make an account for when the mentally deranged billionaire finishes killing twitter.

[Herr Dethnout]

1 hour ago, banjiepixel said:

This is exactly why we should have actually higher standards for hobbyist projects when it makes sense. GZDoom should be by all means better representation of Doom than any official release because they have basically infinite development time on their side and should generally also have closer emotional connection to the source material than your average software developer.

That's a complete nosense after you realize that "infinite development time" is just the (probably) free time they had and invest on a hobby. In fact, I'm still surprised that Graf and co. managed yo rewrite the entire GZDOOM source code (main reason why is now used for commercial games). Official developers doesn't have "infinite" dev time, but they invest all his time (cuz is they job) on it.

 

Also, about the emotional connection, is not like people from this community actually worked no the Unity Port... Right?

 

1 hour ago, banjiepixel said:

It is important to question why opinion of someone outside the Doom community even matters.

Because people outside Doom are the first to using GZDoom as his first entry on the community. You can actually see a lot of people from this community that his first time playing Doom was with GZDoom lol

[Darkcrafter07]

1 hour ago, RataUnderground said:

>A speedrunner's opinion
>GzDoom

C'mon.
 

 
No. As I said earlier, the CRT PC monitors of the 1990s displayed a crisp, clear image. The PC is a work platform, they had to read text and excel tables.
The CRT filters that some modern emulators use mimic CRT TVs, which are a different thing and make no sense in a Doom port.
 

You forget that CRT was stretching picture up differently a resolution to resolution so yeah, 640x400, 800x600, 1024x768 looked crisp, 320x200 looked a bit blurrier, scanlines and grid were more prominent, some chromatic abberation occured. As soon as I discovered CRT shaders, I don't play 320x200 games anymore without them, it's just such a huge difference, lines are thicker, some "grainy" texture is back, pixel flickering is less apparent, pixels are not looking that big and ugly.

[TasAcri]

This is how DOOM looks with CRT Guest Advanced

 

Textures are still pixelly but not as ultra sharp and edges are more rounded.

[Mr Masker]

2 hours ago, banjiepixel said:

Opinion of a speedrunner usually has more value than opinion of a very casual player.

I disagree with this. In most cases, alot of the people coming to your game are casual players. A less skilled player of video games as a playtester can give a much better view of how understandable a game is to new players.

 

If you want your playtesters to already understand everything about the game going in, you might as well just playtest the game yourself.

 

I know this is about Doom Source Ports and not an original Video Game, but I believe the mentality partly fits here too.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Mr Masker

[RataUnderground]

1 minute ago, TasAcri said:

This is how DOOM looks with CRT Guest Advanced

 

Textures are still pixelly but not as ultra sharp and edges are more rounded.

This filter produces a historical falsehood .
A CRT monitor looks like this.



The reason why in some arcade games the scanlines are so pronounced is because the devs of those games purposely left lines unrendered to gain performance.

[TasAcri]

That CRT filter is more like a CRT TV, not a high-res monitor.

[RataUnderground]

2 minutes ago, TasAcri said:

That CRT filter is more like a CRT TV, not a high-res monitor.

Okay, I'm fine with that, it's just my pet peeve that people think crt monitors look like shit xD
Enough with my personal obsessions.

[banjiepixel]

2 hours ago, RataUnderground said:

>A speedrunner's opinion
>GzDoom

C'mon.

 

I didn't say that specifically speedrunner's opinion has extra value in this case, i meant that those that generally know the best also have the most valuable opinions. 

 

Quote

 No. As I said earlier, the CRT PC monitors of the 1990s displayed a crisp, clear image. The PC is a work platform, they had to read text and excel tables.
The CRT filters that some modern emulators use mimic CRT TVs, which are a different thing and make no sense in a Doom port.

 

I meant outside of Doom games and to be specific, console games. 

 

I do know the difference between interlaced and progressive scan and how old TV's had image that was interlaced while PC monitors and modern TV's use progressive scan to display the image. I also happen to be also pretty old in general and have played Doom on an actual CRT PC monitor.

 

1 hour ago, TasAcri said:

Old 8/16 bit console games were made with those CRT filters in mind. The art was made in such way that it's only "complete" with that specific layer. There were all sorts of tricks developers did to fake more colors and transparencies using the CRT blending. Not having the CRT shaders means that you are missing some things the developers intended.

 

Yes, were made for but raw uninterlaced image was how most people using emulators experienced those games and that is bigger group than those that actually experienced the games on the original hardware and a old school CRT TV with a intenlaced image. And then there the many direct ports of console games to the PC that looked exactly like the emulated version, no interlacing.

 

Quote

 

Also, more importantly, CRT shaders are NOT the same thing as texture filtering. DOOM on consoles won't look like the texture filtered GZDoom crap if you play with a good CRT shader. It's still the same chunky pixellated game. Same with all PS1 games, CRT shaders don't filter the textures themselves.

 

CRT shaders and filters simulate interlaced image that old TV's had while texture filtering is to add blur to hide too low texture resolution and to help 2D bitmap assets blend better with 3D polygonal assets, something very common in N64 games. Doom by default has no textures with resoluion issues and there are polygonal assets so the texture filter is pretty much useless.

 

19 minutes ago, Mr Masker said:

I disagree with this. In most cases, alot of the people coming to your game are casual players. A less skilled player of video games as a playtester can give a much better view of how understandable a game is to new players.

 

Being a casual player has nothing to do with actual skill. It's about how deeply person willing to engage with a game. Person that doesn't bother even to look at the movelist of the character in play in a fighting game is a extremely casual player while being person wanting to do actual deep dive to the mechanics of is a common feature that speedrunners have. And the nature of playtesting is that it often requires deeper dive to how the game works than an average person buying the game will reach during their playtime.

Edited July 12, 2023 by banjiepixel