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

[TasAcri]

Just now, RataUnderground said:

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.

 

Btw, i do have a bootleg CRT Arcade cabinet with an old school CRT RGB monitor... I use it to fiddle with the shader settings and achieve an authentic result for my emulated arcade games. All games have pretty pronounced scanlines, though i'm not sure what you mean when you say "unrendered lines"

[Blzut3]

3 hours ago, banjiepixel said:

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

The users which participate in these forum or other Doom community discussion platforms are a minority of the users of a successful source port.  This isn't to say that the core users aren't important, but just that that total addressable market for a source port is much much larger than the people that would bother to make themselves known.  For these users first impressions matter a lot as to whether they will continue to use the product, so the defaults can matter a lot.

 

Plus it's these very users which are at question here since besides a couple weirdly stubborn people, everyone here can change the texture filtering setting no problem.  It's just like indigotyrian has pointed out when we see people use GZDoom casually (youtube video or live stream) it's like visiting someone with frame interpolation still enabled on their TV.

 

As a dramatic example, ECWolf took a long time to gain any traction inside the Wolf3D community but had immediate and massive adoption outside of the community.  Should I have listened to the Wolf3D community and removed WASD support because "that's not how the game is meant to be played and it makes it much easier" or are the other 99%+ of the users right?

[LexiMax]

10 hours ago, Lippeth said:

My apologies, I didn't mean to tear down your work.

 

No offense taken.  I wasn't trying to lay an offense minefield or anything.  It's just that gamedev is complicated and sometimes there are compromises that have to be made.  Besides, I was never a fan of leaning on official releases as authoritative, because authoritative releases can be done badly.  There's also no accounting for personal preference, despite however popular or unpopular the preference might be.

 

This is why I like to stick to facts.  Facts like the original artwork never being designed for bilinear filtering, and that kind of filtering being an undeniable source of lost or obscured detail in pixel art.  I don't mind filtering pixel art on principal, but I don't understand the reluctance to at the very least choose a better default filter - be that None or something else.

 

2 hours ago, Herr Dethnout said:

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

 

These days, most people's first exposure to Doom won't be through a hobbyist source port played on a PC - it'll be through an official port like the Unity port.  I don't have a crystal ball, but that port will likely never support GZDoom content, or have bilinear filtering as an intended default setting.

Edited July 12, 2023 by LexiMax

[RataUnderground]

13 minutes ago, LexiMax said:

 

These days, most people's first exposure to Doom won't be through a hobbyist source port played on a PC - it'll be through an official port like the Unity port.  I don't have a crystal ball, but that port will likely never support GZDoom content, or have bilinear filtering as an intended default setting.

 

I will argue that GzDoom is in fact the third most popular option by total population, following the unity port and dosbox. 

So Im very thankful for the Unity port. I think its great as a first contact with Doom.

[ReaperAA]

35 minutes ago, RataUnderground said:

I will argue that GzDoom is in fact the third most popular option by total population, following the unity port and dosbox. .

 

*2nd most popular I think. I doubt many play Doom on dosbox, especially after Unity port arrived.

[RataUnderground]

11 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

*2nd most popular I think. I doubt many play Doom on dosbox, especially after Unity port arrived.

Maybe it's controversial and I don't have any data to support it, but I think a lot of people assume that to play an old Ms-Dos game you need the original game and dosbox, and it doesn't even cross their minds that there might be modern sourceports or even know the sourceport concept.
I'm not saying it's how most people play, but maybe it's how most people play for the first time if it's not through the unity sourceport.

Edited July 12, 2023 by RataUnderground

[banjiepixel]

1 minute ago, Blzut3 said:

The users which participate in these forum or other Doom community discussion platforms are a minority of the users of a successful source port.  This isn't to say that the core users aren't important, but just that that total addressable market for a source port is much much larger than the people that would bother to make themselves known.  For these users first impressions matter a lot as to whether they will continue to use the product, so the defaults can matter a lot.

 

Active users in places like this forum are a powerful tool to building and curating an experience that gives universally the best possoble first impression of the source material. Something like a lack of some advanced graphical effect seen in more modern games isn't a reasonable cause for bad first impression considering the source material. By questioning their opinion mattering I meant seeing reasonable their opinions are while prioritizing respecting and preserving the source material. Unreasonable opinion also has very little value for the discussion.

 

1 minute ago, Blzut3 said:

Plus it's these very users which are at question here since besides a couple weirdly stubborn people, everyone here can change the texture filtering setting no problem.  It's just like indigotyrian has pointed out when we see people use GZDoom casually (youtube video or live stream) it's like visiting someone with frame interpolation still enabled on their TV.

 

My main concern is the respecting the source material and not needlesly presenting it in a inaccurate way. The setting itself is reasonably easy to change but it is generally better design that people who want to use the feature will need to seek how to turn it on because there doesn't seem to be any notable reason for to have the texture filtering on by defauft in the public release of GZDoom. If I were the creator of GZDoom and liked texture filtering, I would literally just have my own private builds for my own personal use where the filtering is on by default.

 

1 minute ago, Blzut3 said:

As a dramatic example, ECWolf took a long time to gain any traction inside the Wolf3D community but had immediate and massive adoption outside of the community.  Should I have listened to the Wolf3D community and removed WASD support because "that's not how the game is meant to be played and it makes it much easier" or are the other 99%+ of the users right?

 

But how much what they said had actually factual merit? Couldn't the same be done by just remapping couple of keyboard buttons outside of game using external software or a hardware hacks? And changing button layouts in general is common change in new ports to more modern platfroms, who in the right mind would demand that Wolf3D or Doom should use the old dpad and buttons gamepad standards dual analogs are the modern standard. It is a reasonable Quality of Life feature that could be easily seen being in a new official release. While not being accurate to the source material, it has alot of facts to back it up to even becoming the new default setting. Bringing old games to the modern dat requires atleast some adaptation to happen.

 

It isn't the discussion or the opinions that matter, evidence and good argumentation is what actually matters when making these kinds of design decisions. If someone from outside of the community presents a good argument on how something should be, by all means their opinion can have alot of value. I definitely do no want the community to be elitistic or demand absolute purism. As members of a Doom community and being more familiar with the source material, we generally should try to guide those outside of the community to a better direction. Goal is to preserve accurate history related to the game and build gaming culture that has healthy connection to it's past.

[Scuba Steve]

I reread it and Blutz is agreeing; we're not the primary users, but we have the most knowledge, which is why it's important that Doom ports take their cues from us, the die-hard fans and content creators, because we understand the aesthetics of Doom better than causal users who simply "turn on" GZDoom and say "Oh, this is what it's supposed to look like."

 

I have no intention of retiring from this debate and I want to have that conversation with @Graf Zahl. I've laid out a half dozen posts respectfully articulating why it's such an awful, hideous, obtrusive first impression for newcomers, and I want legitimate reasons why it should be enabled by default. For twenty years I've exclusively made content for ZDoom and, when the time came, reworked my projects to work properly in GZDoom, because it was important for my work to be playable in the most up-to-date version of the port. But I can't begin to tell you how infuriating it is to watch someone play Urban Brawl with trilinear filtering in a YouTube stream which is mucking up artwork I spent years meticulously drawing. And this is not because they want it to look like this, it's because it's the default and they don't know any better.

 

The content creators that keep GZDoom alive loathe texture filtering with the fire of a thousand suns, there is no good argument that can be made to keep it turned on by default. Remember, every commercial GZDoom game has decided to turn this off by default. The only sensible action is to make "Texture Filtering OFF" the default standard appearance for an engine which is still almost exclusively used as a DOOM port for DOOM addons.

[Blzut3]

15 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

 

But how much what they said had actually factual merit? Couldn't the same be done by just remapping couple of keyboard buttons outside of game using external software or a hardware hacks?

The original engine doesn't have the ability to strafe without the strafe on key no matter what remap you do. You can kind of macro a reasonable setup, but people still seek out ECWolf because the hack solution isn't good enough.

 

As for merit, the game is obviously a lot easier with WASD in part because it helps keep the player moving and being in a state of moving reduces enemy accuracy. So I think they have a valid argument, but it doesn't matter since people in large don't want to play the game that way. (And if you do care you can just not use the key binding. Although that opens a whole new can of worms with creators that insist they should be able to prevent the player from "cheating.")  It is some of the reason why traditional Wolf3D mods didn't add strafe keys even though it's an easy addition.

 

Ultimately it should be clear that I'm in the camp that the defaults should obviously change, but you literally asked why the opinion of someone outside the community even matters with no qualifiers.  Sometimes it does as it seems you concede. I personally can't justify the current default, but I can understand how the person that decides it is rationalizing it which I think is key to attempting to make productive arguments.

[Ulukai]

6 hours ago, Darkcrafter07 said:

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.

I agree. I could see scan lines with 512*384 or lower using my first monitor (early 90's), while using 640*480 or higher resolution it was much difficult to distinguish those black lines between pixels. Those scan lines were thinner than TV scan lines, but you could see them.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Ulukai

[banjiepixel]

4 minutes ago, Blzut3 said:

As for merit, the game is obviously a lot easier with WASD in part because it helps keep the player moving and being in a state of moving reduces enemy accuracy. So I think they have a valid argument, but it doesn't matter since people in large don't want to play the game that way. (And if you do care you can just not use the key binding.

 

It is a single player game so it it very reasonable that player will get some advantage as a side effect of adapting the controls for the modern standards. As long as it also is easy to switch to the original controls, there is no actual problem, maybe do just best you can to communicate what was in the original and what wasn't.. I don't see how they have a valid argument since even just in terms of accessibility, WASD can do alot. Not only is it control layout that is the modern standards, it can make the game playable for someone that physically couldn't play the game with it's original control layout. Alot of games these days put more focus on accessibility and there are always tons of purists complaining, including recent release of Street Fighter 6.

 

42 minutes ago, Blzut3 said:

Although that opens a whole new can of worms with creators that insist they should be able to prevent the player from "cheating.")  It is some of the reason why traditional Wolf3D mods didn't add strafe keys even though it's an easy addition.

 

I don't think that there can be very solid case for creators being able to do that. What's the actual practical damage from player "cheating" in these situations?

 

56 minutes ago, Blzut3 said:

Ultimately it should be clear that I'm in the camp that the defaults should obviously change, but you literally asked why the opinion of someone outside the community even matters with no qualifiers.  Sometimes it does as it seems you concede. I personally can't justify the current default, but I can understand how the person that decides it is rationalizing it which I think is key to attempting to make productive arguments.

 

I am pretty sure I actually said "It is important to question why opinion of someone outside the Doom community even matters.". My point was that unless they can bring something solid to the discussion, value of their input is very shaky and we should remember that. Some people seem to act like GZDoom with more sensible and accurate to source material defaults would alienate people outside of the community. Point is that so much of what we do as the Doom community will eventually trickle down to the outside community so primary focus should be the standards within our community. And it seems pretty clear what the current agreed community standard for iissue in hand is, including the fact that the Unity port doesn't even have texture blur filter and it is by design.

 

It may seem that I concede because people read a harsher tone in my posts than I am trying to have. Not sure it's the the fact that english isn't my first language or me just maybe having some autistic tendecies is what is making the communication harder. I am trying to have discussion in good spirit. Alot of it just having fun with this issue because it is very unlikely that the defaults will change. But it's good to discuss about this so other source port developers know what the community agreed standard should be and why.

 

Also, I like ECWolf, it's pretty neat.

[Blzut3]

13 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

I don't think that there can be very solid case for creators being able to do that. What's the actual practical damage from player "cheating" in these situations?

You'd think, but yet it is a very common discussion and there is some degree of a cat and mouse game between creators trying to disable "cheating" and GZDoom trying to preserve the player's ability to do whatever.

[Gez]

2 hours ago, Ulukai said:

I agree. I could see scan lines with 512*384 or lower using my first monitor (early 90's), while using 640*480 or higher resolution it was much difficult to distinguish those black lines between pixels. Those scan lines were thinner than TV scan lines, but you could see them.

I always found it funny that "scan lines" ended up meaning the black lines in popular speech. A CRT works by throwing electrons at the screen, this beam is aimed left to right and top to bottom, the lines of pixels that get lit by it as a result are the scan lines -- the parts that are scanned by the beam.

 

On a good monitor, you could only see the scan lines, and not the unscanned black bars between them! :p

[Ordon]

5 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

*2nd most popular I think. I doubt many play Doom on dosbox, especially after Unity port arrived.

I play on dosbox and I prefer it over the newer source ports 

[Blzut3]

53 minutes ago, Gez said:

I always found it funny that "scan lines" ended up meaning the black lines in popular speech. A CRT works by throwing electrons at the screen, this beam is aimed left to right and top to bottom, the lines of pixels that get lit by it as a result are the scan lines -- the parts that are scanned by the beam.

 

On a good monitor, you could only see the scan lines, and not the unscanned black bars between them! :p

If we're being pedantic the classic example of scan lines is also caused by the 240p mode on TVs which is just a hack of not alternating fields on an interlaced signal.  So the thick TV "scan lines" are actually more "unscanned scan lines" and not just the space between them. :P

 

Worth noting that another PC vs TV difference is that 320x200 and 320x240 on the PC I believe are doubled scanned (i.e. actually a 320x400 or 320x480 signal) since pure VGA monitors could only sync a couple of timings.

 

On that note I actually did recently get into the age old debate on aspect ratio correction in ECWolf so I do happen to have a screen shot of 320x200 on a non-multisync VGA monitor that came with a 286: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/546240331239129099/1109687859247591424/wolf3d-vga.jpg  Phone camera limitations mean the space between scan lines is not visible at all on the camera, and they're a tiny bit more visible in person since, I presume, the dot is sized for 640x480.

[Fluuschoen]

/care

But no.

[LexiMax]

6 hours ago, Blzut3 said:

I personally can't justify the current default, but I can understand how the person that decides it is rationalizing it which I think is key to attempting to make productive arguments. 

 

I'm sorry, but I feel like Graf's relative silence in this thread speaks volumes.  He could have engaged with the thread and told us his thoughts directly, but instead we're getting his rationalizations, real or speculative, second-hand from other developers and community members.

 

To me, this says that he simply prefers the defaults as they are, but doesn't want to to defend his position, because it's really just his personal preference.  Which is 100% OK.  It's his hobby project that he works on in his spare time.  One of the perks is getting to be a tastemaker, and he's under no obligation to change anything for anybody.

 

What I'm less cool with is dangling a carrot in front of people thinking that there is some middle ground to be had when there might very well not be.

[BeachThunder]

He did post in here once, but not about the actual topic...

[LexiMax]

36 minutes ago, BeachThunder said:

He did post in here once, but not about the actual topic...

 

Exactly.  Graf has had ample opportunities to talk about potential routes for a middle ground, or even elaborate on his rationalizations, but he has chosen to remain silent on both.  So...I think it's safe to assume there's no productive way forward unless he actually says otherwise.

Edited July 13, 2023 by LexiMax

[Blzut3]

36 minutes ago, LexiMax said:

I'm sorry, but I feel like Graf's relative silence in this thread speaks volumes.  He could have engaged with the thread and told us his thoughts directly, but instead we're getting his rationalizations, real or speculative, second-hand from other developers and community members.

Given the topic of the defaults have come up numerous times over the years it's definitely not speculative, here's just two such threads on the ZDoom forums: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?p=1047242#p1047242 ("All I will say here is that the defaults is what I like. If I wanted I'd have changed them 10 years ago.") https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?p=1102902#p1102902 ("Ugly is relative. They are the way they are because those were my personal preferences back in 2005 when the first release was made.") I'm sure if I kept searching through his post history I'd find more. He even reiterated recently it in the other thread: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/136350-what-are-the-reasons-to-play-other-ports-except-gzdoom/?do=findComment&comment=2666716 (Specifically the part: "As for the texture filtering, I know that probably 90% here do not like it - but do you have ANY numbers for the general public?")  At some point all you're doing is searching for him to say a specific set of words (to be fair Suba Steve specifically said this is what he wants) even though he's said effectively the same thing many times over.

 

I'm not sure I see a "dangling carrot" here, although I guess it would be nice to see a response to RataUnderground's survey since that does fit the definition of "ANY numbers" if the assertion on the user base composition is correct.

[Scuba Steve]

The topic has been brought up on occasion, but there has never been real dialog about texture filtering and, even more important, there has never been an actual defense put forward on why gzdoom should default to something so obviously gross, unnatural, and disrespectful to the artists who create content for Doom. Personal preference is not a defense; once you make the choice to release something to the public, the public is allowed to criticize your work... and sometimes they're right, and you're wrong.

 

If @Graf Zahl prefers texture filtering, he can turn it on himself. Everything I've said in this thread is objectively true; almost everyone—on Doomworld and the broader community—thinks it should be off by default, this is borne out by literally every poll anyone has conducted and the fact that EVERY commercial GZDoom game turns it off as the default setting... They're artists, like me, and know it looks like shit. It ruins the artistic vision of content creators by applying an ugly Photoshop blur filter to their work... And the broader gaming community just assumes it's supposed to look like garbage because the premier Doom port just "looks like this."

 

Sorry, not sorry, but I didn't hide like a coward or claim "personal preference" when LGBT members of the community told me Urban Brawl felt pretty offensive, I realized they were right and made some changes. I didn't "cave," I just listened to people who had a better perspective than I did.

 

Everyone is right and Graf is wrong: texture filtering is ugly and needs to be turned off by default. Either GZDoom can improve by listening to the artists and content creators who know best, or it can stubbornly continue to be the worst-looking port by default because someone with bad taste likes the way the blur tool looks.

[LexiMax]

1 hour ago, Blzut3 said:

At some point all you're doing is searching for him to say a specific set of words (to be fair Suba Steve specifically said this is what he wants) even though he's said effectively the same thing many times over. 

 

The problem with rationalizations and rhetorical questions is that they keep the conversation going.  When people respond earnestly to assertions like "we got a legacy of 25 years of ZDoom maps that depend on them" and rhetorical questions like "but do you have ANY numbers for the general public?" and then he just refuses to entertain any follow-up, it feels like an unfinished conversation that a door has been left open on.

 

A response like "All I will say here is that the defaults is what I like. If I wanted I'd have changed them 10 years ago." is much better and more definitive - in fact I think that post would've been better if he had just stopped there.  I wish he would've said something to that effect in the previous DW thread - after all I almost never browse the ZDoom Forums.

 

But at least it's clear now.  No room for negotiation, it's simply not going to be changed.  Ever.

Edited July 13, 2023 by LexiMax

[RataUnderground]

I'm not going to take your reason Scuba, but if I were Zahl, at this point I would keep the filter only out of spite. this borders on bullying.

[ReaperAA]

6 minutes ago, RataUnderground said:

I'm not going to take your reason Scuba, but if I were Zahl, at this point I would keep the filter only out of spite. this borders on bullying.

 

^Agreed. It's pretty clear that Graf isn't going to change it and aggressively pestering him, as Scuba Steve is doing, isn't gonna help.

[Professor Hastig]

9 minutes ago, RataUnderground said:

this borders on bullying.

 

Well said. Let's take this thought a little further.

What options are left to Graf now?

 

1. Keep this option as it is and be labelled stubborn and uncooperative.

2. Change it and give a cheap victory to the bullies which would just see it as an invitation to continue on this route.

 

... or ...

 

3. Say "screw you" and quit.

 

 

[Scuba Steve]

We haven't even started the actual conversation about texture filtering yet. A litany of objective truths have been presented which answer Graf's original question which was posed as a counter argument to turning it off. Turns out, he was wrong and everyone hates it. What's the next argument for retaining a feature everyone hates. Remember, Graf explicitly said the reason for not incorporating controller vibration is because there weren't enough people asking for it... so decisions are clearly based on end-user preferences. 96% of the over 300 people polled want it disabled. Imagine working as a software developer and retaining a feature despite a 96% disapproval rating... it's brain-meltingly asinine. Since Graf asked for evidence that everyone hates it, and now two separate polls have confirmed that, it deserves a response. GZDoom is not a one-man show anymore, there are many people behind the scenes to make the port even more feature-rich and it is a disservice to keep some shitty default setting despite everyone knowing it's wrong to keep it.

 

Also, I would never respect anyone who was GOING to make an informed decision and do the right thing, but decided to do the wrong thing because someone spoke in a slightly aggressive manner.

[banjiepixel]

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

1. Keep this option as it is and be labelled stubborn and uncooperative.

 

The way he is handling something like this issue seems pretty heavily make that go beyond of him being just labelled. People that are similar position as he is should be expected handle these things with professionalism and maturity. There is a strong burden on Graf to give valid justification why product released for public use goes with design decision that is based on his personal preference instead of going with something more neutral and universally functional. All this simply tells us alot about what kind of person Graf is and being stubborn and uncooperative seem to be actually pretty accurate.

 

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

2. Change it and give a cheap victory to the bullies which would just see it as an invitation to continue on this route.

 

I don't aim to bully him or anyone else. I also believe that most people that agree with me on this issue with default setting also are not trying to bully. There are plenty of facts and logic based reasons why the default here should be changed and we are simply asking Graf to be a professional and chamge a default setting into something that atleast seems very heavily much better design. Graf is free to debunk the idea of it being better design but burden of proof is clearly on him at this point. And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect complex software development project like GZDoom to always aim for better design.

 

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

3. Say "screw you" and quit. 

 

Graf abandoning GZDoom project would mean probably that it would move in to hands of someone who would take better care of it. And GZDoom not being developed anymore would create such a big void that a fork of it would replace it very quickly. Graf knows this and that is why he won't quit, he has currently too much power and influence to lose. Most people barely know the name of main developer of the most current fork of the source port they use and developers of old dead iterations are often forgotten.

[Gez]

2 hours ago, banjiepixel said:

Graf knows this and that is why he won't quit, he has currently too much power and influence to lose.

"Power and influence"? I thought we were talking about a source port, here; not about a vast multi-billion corporate empire, or a developed nation-state...

 

 

This kind of hyper-dramatized attitude makes it very hard to take the whole thread seriously.

[Professor Hastig]

8 minutes ago, Gez said:

This kind of hyper-dramatized attitude makes it very hard to take the whole thread seriously.

 

Not only that. I have a nagging suspicion that this kind of attitude also works as a very efficient deterrent against new developers, especially for more advanced ports that dare to deviate from the original game a bit in their goals. They now see first-hand what they are up to if they join one of these ports' developer groups in a somewhat significant position.

 

[RataUnderground]

He may not have power that matters, but he has the power to piss off a handful of fans in a corner of the internet. The funniest of powers if used well.