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

[banjiepixel]

29 minutes ago, Gez said:

"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...

 

The fact that we are talking about just hobbyist projects doesn't change anything. People love to hold power socially and try to make it last as much they can. And being in the position where you alone can decide arbitrarily the defaults for a software that atleast thousands of people use every day, that is alot of power and influence.

 

29 minutes ago, Gez said:

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

 

Nce try at trying to invalidate the facts. Or maybe you just don't see actual bigger picture here.

 

16 minutes ago, Professor Hastig said:

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.

 

Deviation isn't the issue. All this is about bad design decisions being made for no good reason instead of actually trying to improve the general user experience. Texture filtering the source material by default literally makes zero sense. There is no any kind of general need for texture filtering so it should be the invidual user that has to turn it on.

Edited July 13, 2023 by banjiepixel

[Darkcrafter07]

If I ever make a fork of GZDoom it will run on older systems thanks to directx api and feature some optimizations but will not be capable of nearest-neighbour interpolation at all (joke) hehe. I actually prefer having both options and switch them when get bored of one, not a big deal for me really. A real fan of Doom might generate an idea to watch some YouTube video on how original Doom looked and find out about pixels and wonder how to make GZDoom to look the same, head off over another video and do it easily. A much bigger issue for me is sprite clipping and if I remember correctly, there is a way to fix that in GZDoom hardware renderer but as some developer said, it's going to bog performance, how much? - I don't know. Yes, with such system requirements as GZDoom has I would like to get: reversed depth buffer, raytracing or screen-space reflections, alpha testing (no aliasing for transparent textures with filtering on), correct depth sorting (transparent objects mix like mess now, like it's OpenGL1 times), true 3D handling, faster performance (like Helion) and in my opinion this is not going to happen if we just bog out developers while not contributing nothing.

[Professor Hastig]

Yes. Rewriting the entire engine from scratch. I get it... :P

 

[banjiepixel]

3 minutes ago, Professor Hastig said:

Yes. Rewriting the entire engine from scratch. I get it... :P

 

 

Nobody is making that demand.

[Gez]

21 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

Nce try at trying to invalidate the facts. Or maybe you just don't see actual bigger picture here.

See, one of my hobbies is following geopolitical developments, so the idea that bickering among fans of an old video game can be the "bigger picture" is intrinsically funny to me.

 

We should have asked at the recent Vilnius Summit if Graf should turn off texture filtering. This was a grave missed opportunity...

[Scuba Steve]

Let's be fair; I am deeply invested in politics as well, but people can compartmentalize different things in their lives. This thread would be a lot more useful if there were fewer comments towards each other, and more direct comments about the disdain for texture filtering and waiting for a rebuttal from Graf.

 

It would be nice if GZDoom handled sprite clipping like Strife VE so it rendered them closer to the real game, but I do recall a conversation with Nash about performance and problems with portals. GZDoom does have a "smart" setting which keeps sprites from clipping in the floor, but it does muck with animations and sprite vertical alignment, but overall looks a little better.

[D4NUK1]

Let's be rational and re read the main concern here. This it's not like we are not appreciating the main work of GZDoom and they devs including Graf.

 

We are mostly speaking that this new spike on popularity for GZDoom for media like Myhouse or any newer stuff would suffer something of the experience because the texture filter 

[ENEMY!!!]

I reckon that there's also a background/cultural context behind this.

 

While ZDoom came out in 1998, GZDoom first emerged in August 2005.  I remember that during that period, graphics were advancing very rapidly, and most gamers were flocking to the newer games because they looked more realistic, and Doom was getting left behind.  I remember that I preferred bilinear or trilinear texture filtering on at that time because vanilla Doom looked primitive and old to me, and the filtering made Doom sort of look more akin to the newer games, even though it came at the cost of some washing out of the textures and sprites.  I know I'm not your "average" user, but I reckon there's a fair chance that, around 2005, having texture filtering default to on might have helped attract some gamers to old-school Doom who believed that Doom was old hat.

 

Today, the culture is very different: graphics are still advancing but a strong element of diminishing returns has kicked in.  The difference in graphics between, say, Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, while noticeable, pales by comparison with, say, the difference in graphics between Half-Life and Half-Life 2.  As we're seeing from the tons of 1990s FPS-style indie games being released on Steam and selling well, today there's far more of an appetite for old-school shooters, including a renewed appreciation of the pixellated look of the 1990s shooters.  Because of this, the majority of retro gamers are now looking for something relatively close to the original experience, and therefore not preferring to use bilinear/trilinear texture filtering, which is making the default far less appropriate today than it would have been in 2005.

 

I remember when I first took up Makkon's suggestion (in the Makkon textures readme) of using nearest filtering instead of bilinear or trilinear, the pixellated look seemed a bit off to me because I was so used to the smoothed out look.  After a while, once I got used to it, I started preferring it to the smoothed out look, especially when using high res textures like the Makkon Quake ones.  People tend to get used to what they're familiar with.  I have a suspicion that Graf's preference, which is reflected by the default, reflects some stubbornness and sticking with what is familiar, especially as I've been guilty of the same thing myself.

 

Edited July 13, 2023 by ENEMY!!!

[Kinsie]

2 hours ago, Gez said:

"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.

Honestly, at this point this thread is just embarrassing for everyone involved, myself included. Put it in the bin, take five, and come back next year for round 24.

[Scuba Steve]

I have to disagree about shelving it, but it does need to be more focused. Tabling discussion for the last 15 years is what has allowed this stupid feature to limp along as some zombie feature from the early days of hardware rendering... And it has allowed Graf to avoid engaging with the user base.

 

This conversation can't end until the concerns of content creators are addressed.

[LexiMax]

16 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

This conversation can't end until the concerns of content creators are addressed. 

 

Conversations are a two-way street, and he's under no obligation to respond.  I think his silence (as well as the sum total of his past responses) paint a pretty clear picture.  He's not going to change the default, and he frankly doesn't care about your - or anyone's - objections to it.  You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

 

This isn't to say that there isn't a productive path forward, but whatever productive path forward does exist isn't going to involve Graf.

Edited July 13, 2023 by LexiMax

[Kinsie]

7 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

This conversation can't end until the concerns of content creators are addressed.

When it comes to things Graf isn't personally interested in, The Conversation or The Debate or whatever doesn't work because Graf has apparently mastered the legendary, once-thought-extinct martial art of closing the browser tab and doing something else.

 

If you want to change his mind on a feature, the only method with a proven track-record of working is to implement it yourself and submit a pull request. A good number of features in GZDoom were no-way-never-happen until someone else took charge and implemented them themselves, at which point they were promoted to oh-sure-okay-whatever status.

[TimeOfDeath666]

Voted YES out of spite.

[RataUnderground]

9 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

When it comes to things Graf isn't personally interested in, The Conversation or The Debate or whatever doesn't work because Graf has apparently mastered the legendary, once-thought-extinct martial art of closing the browser tab and doing something else.

 

If you want to change his mind on a feature, the only method with a proven track-record of working is to implement it yourself and submit a pull request. A good number of features in GZDoom were no-way-never-happen until someone else took charge and implemented them themselves, at which point they were promoted to oh-sure-okay-whatever status.

@LexiMax already suggested this, can't be that difficult. Anybody knows how to do it?  (Sorry, I'm an artist, not a programmer xD)

[Doomy__Doom]

A PR is just going to get insta-closed like the one from 2017: https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/pull/278

It's literally a single character change in one file. A. Single. Character. It would've happened if it were desired, there's no point to any of this discussion.

[banjiepixel]

Why is that in order to this thread's existence to justified, this discussion needs to be able to make Graf change his stance? That clearly wasn't the starting point and this thread is a great place for people sharing their opinions about Graf's design decision. The benefit of this discussion on more how anybody making a GZDoom fork probably should handle the defaults and why making texture filtering the default visual look is a bad idea.

 

By all means, it seems to me that people who want the default be changed do respect that as GZDoom's creator, Graf has the right to make the defaults whatever he wants, but also wish that he would have the understanding and maturity to do the factually correct thing and change default.

 

It is healthy to talk about best development practices and that is what this discussion is about. Any discussion saying or implying that Graf has to change the default is technically offtopic and that makes the fact that Graf probably will never change his mind irrelevant to continuing this discussion.

 

Also, in terms of consistency, there is no reason why texture filtering shouldn't be handled same exact ways as brightmaps and lights. That would be simply good user interface design. These 3 options are pretty likely to be enabled together and person not wanting to use brightmaps and lights is also extremely unlikely to want texture filtering.

Edited July 13, 2023 by banjiepixel

[Kinsie]

12 minutes ago, Doomy__Doom said:

A PR is just going to get insta-closed like the one from 2017: https://github.com/ZDoom/gzdoom/pull/278

It's literally a single character change in one file. A. Single. Character. It would've happened if it were desired, there's no point to any of this discussion.

That's why I previously suggested a startup wizard, which could knock out a few more useful common default options or preferences (OPL vs. fluidsynth, WSAD vs. whatever). And then most everyone I suggested it to mostly just looked at me like I was mad. Which, I mean, I still make free GZDoom mods in 2023 after everyone else pivoted off into Patreon-funded $15 stand-alone Steam games, so... point.

 

Oh well. Can't say I'm too bothered either way. It takes like two minutes to change alongside all my keybinds and other settings on a fresh install. Mildly annoying, but not like 12 pages worth of annoying. About on the same level as every Quake source port defaulting all the HUD elements to microscopic size.

[Mr Masker]

49 minutes ago, TimeOfDeath666 said:

Voted YES out of spite.

"Some people, just want to watch the world burn..."

Edited July 13, 2023 by Mr Masker

[RataUnderground]

Okay, which one of you is running this account. Reveal yourself.

Edited July 13, 2023 by RataUnderground

[LexiMax]

1 hour ago, RataUnderground said:

@LexiMax already suggested this, can't be that difficult. Anybody knows how to do it?  (Sorry, I'm an artist, not a programmer xD) 

 

Doing a PR is pretty easy, from a technical point of view.  First, you fork GZdoom on github and then clone your fork locally.  Then, you have to get GZDoom building - there's likely a set of instructions on the wiki.  Once you finally have a working GZDoom, you go into the source and find where the default filtering setting is set, and unless it's changed significantly from how it's done in older versions it's likely just a parameter for the cvar's constructor.  After that, you smoke test to ensure the default is being set properly for a fresh config, push your change back to your fork, and then open a PR in the main repo pointing to your change.

 

However, Blzut3 has asserted that a PR won't make any difference in this case.  And upon reflection, I can think of a thousand things I would rather do in my spare time than arguing against unfalsifiable rationalizations in a Pull Request comments thread, only for it to amount to little more than bulletin-board material about how mean those dastardly Doomworlders are.

 

Maybe in a few months when I'm not in the middle of trying to ship a game.

Edited July 13, 2023 by LexiMax

[roadworx]

On 7/12/2023 at 8:15 AM, TasAcri said:

This is how DOOM looks with CRT Guest Advanced
-pic snipped-

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

 

On 7/12/2023 at 8:22 AM, RataUnderground said:

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

honestly, both of you are wrong. here's a pic of map17 of memento mori 2 running on the original doom2.exe being displayed on my own crt monitor (in spoiler tags, cuz i'd rather not stretch out anyone's page)

 

there's well-defined scanlines there - they're honestly more visible irl - though at the same time, despite what my shitty phone camera shows, the pixels are crisp af. there's little to no rounding at all; i tried to show it in this next pic but my phone just doesn't seem to be very accurate unfortunately



however, scanlines that pronounced really only show up when running stuff at a low resolution. you can barely see them at all in most games made for win95 and above, i had to get really close to the monitor just to even get a glimpse of them in half-life lol

 

Edited July 13, 2023 by roadworx
purging reply to removed posts

[anotak]

the following zscript in this spoiler was in DEFY THE OMPHALOS. pastebin link for source here

it informs the player that their settings are wrong.

 

this particular implementation goes into a custom player class but it could be reworked to function differently (like with eventhandlers maybe)

 

for that project in particular we ended up needing hardware rendering support and not opengl ES so it detects for that too

it also checks for hq resize which isn't a default setting but yeah. i recommend you all use something like this for your maps.

 

Spoiler

 

override void PostBeginPlay()
{
    Super.PostBeginPlay();
    
    CheckSettings();
}
 
void CheckSettings()
{
    int filter_value = CVar.FindCVar('gl_texture_filter').GetInt();
    
    int resize_value = CVar.FindCVar('gl_texture_hqresizemode').GetInt();
    int mult_value = CVar.FindCVar('gl_texture_hqresizemult').GetInt();
    
    int rendermode_value = CVar.FindCVar('vid_rendermode').GetInt();
    int backend_value = CVar.FindCVar('vid_preferbackend').GetInt();
    
    bool is_filter = filter_value > 1 && filter_value < 5;
    bool is_resize = resize_value > 0 && mult_value > 1;
    
    bool is_software = vid_rendermode != 4 || vid_preferbackend == 2 || vid_preferbackend == 3;
    
    bool is_print = is_filter || is_resize || is_software;
    
    string to_print = "";
    
    if(is_print)
    {
        if(is_filter && is_resize)
        {
            to_print = "This levelset was designed for texture filtering to be disabled.\nPlease set 'Texture Filter Mode' to one of the 'None' settings.\n\nThis levelset was designed for high quality resize to be disabled.\nPlease set 'High Quality Resize Mode' to the 'None' setting.";;
        }
        else if(is_resize)
        {
            to_print = "This levelset was designed for high quality resize to be disabled.\nPlease set 'High Quality Resize Mode' to the 'None' setting.";
        }
        else if(is_filter)
        {
            to_print = "This levelset was designed for texture filtering to be disabled.\nPlease set 'Texture Filter Mode' to one of the 'None' settings.";
        }
        else if(is_software)
        {
            to_print = "This levelset was designed for shader-compatible hardware rendering.\nPlease use one of the shader-compatible hardware renderers (OpenGL, Vulkan).";
        }
        
        A_Print(to_print, 20, "BIGFONT");
        A_Log(to_print);
    }
} // checksettings

 

 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2023 by anotak

[Lobo]

Anotak: best post in this whole thread!

[ENEMY!!!]

Another point that I've just thought of, and that hasn't come up much, if at all, is that "off" isn't the only alternative to "texture filtering that smooths everything".

 

In the last couple of years, I haven't shifted to disabling texture filtering completely in Doom or Quake, but have settled upon "Nearest (mipmap)", which doesn't smooth out the textures and sprites when you're reasonably close to them, but does reduce the shimmering in the distance for example.  The vast majority of the criticisms of GZDoom's default setting relate to the smoothing effect of bilinear and trilinear types of filtering, which doesn't apply to my current preferred setting - but technically, I do still have a form of texture filtering enabled. 

 

It is partly for this reason that I haven't voted in the poll.  To me, it's not clear if "off" is meant to mean "the pixellated look rather than smoothed" or "completely off".  I am not convinced that completely off, allowing the shimmering effects at a distance for example, would be the optimal default setting for most GZDoom users.

Edited July 13, 2023 by ENEMY!!!

[Lucius Wooding]

27 minutes ago, roadworx said:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

It's a huge pain to take good pics of CRTs for a few reasons.

 

-You have the moire effect when you misalign the camera with the grid where you get artifacts.

-Sometimes the refresh rate of the screen and shutter speed of the camera can get in a fight.

-Modern phone cameras will wash out this kind of image most of the time due to built in filters; it seemed like that was the case earlier on in the thread. They don't like the crispy rainbow of the zoomed in pixels and helpfully apply an anti noise effect it seems.

-Of course if you're not in focus or the resolution isn't super high or zoomed in you don't get a good idea of the detail at all.

-Sadly, screenshots don't capture much of the fidelity. /s

 

Trust me when I say you can notice the scanlines in real life a lot better than in pictures as worx is saying. It's very distinctive and not as simplistic as alternating rows of black pixels. It exists in all CRTs if you look closely, including monitors and PVMs.

 

Anyway this thread is going nowhere at this point.

 

[dpJudas]

Just now, DRON12261 said:

There's a very big difference between personal preference, and a definitely customised renderer for your creation, without which that very creation will trivially break.

Except that the game didn't break by the user seeing it with linear filtering on. In fact, in my example he wants to have it enabled.

 

I was reminded earlier in this thread that the user of a source port has the right to use and criticize my work as they see fit. If that's the case, surely that also applies to artists?

 

1 minute ago, Redneckerz said:

sounds like the lilith.pk3 scenario, albeit a descendant of it.

I'm sorry, I can't agree this has anthing to do with lilith. That entire mod was based around the premise that certain rendering bugs should work, because otherwise the entire mod breaks. That is not the case with linear filtering. Where do you put the line then? Max resolution at 320x200? Some artist might believe that's the only way to experience their work. This is just silly.

[Kinsie]

To be honest, if I load up a mod and it starts screaming at my that my configuration isn't pure enough, my first response probably isn't going to be to change my settings in response. It's probably just gonna be binning it and going off to watch TV instead or something. Even if I agree with it! Especially if I agree with it! Never doubt how lazy I am.

[roadworx]

3 minutes ago, dpJudas said:

I'm sorry, I can't agree this has anthing to do with lilith. That entire mod was based around the premise that certain rendering bugs should work, because otherwise the entire mod breaks. That is not the case with linear filtering. Where do you put the line then? Max resolution at 320x200? Some artist might believe that's the only way to experience their work. This is just silly.

you do realize that anotak is the one who made lilith, right? the new mod that uses that code probably does similar shit

Edited July 13, 2023 by roadworx

[dpJudas]

5 minutes ago, roadworx said:

you do realize that anotak made lilith, right? the new mod that uses that code probably does similar shit

No, I didn't know he made that mod. But that doesn't really change anything about what I said. I'd say the only kind of mod where I would find it acceptable with that kind of warning is something abusing the engine. That kind of mod however also restricts itself to a specific version of the engine anyway as tomorrow's version can have one of the bugs used fixed. In short: you HAVE to read the readme file closely and truly dedicate yourself to trying out that kind of mod. I don't see what those have to do with the subject of this thread.

Edited July 13, 2023 by dpJudas

[Redneckerz]

4 minutes ago, dpJudas said:

I'm sorry, I can't agree this has anthing to do with lilith. That entire mod was based around the premise that certain rendering bugs should work, because otherwise the entire mod breaks. That is not the case with linear filtering.Where do you put the line then? Max resolution at 320x200? Some artist might believe that's the only way to experience their work. This is just silly.

I am calling it a descendant because the author of Lilith is also the author of this mod and it seeks, besides new levels, a similar outline, namely bizarre and avantgarde colour schemes/textures. It does this to a less extreme effect than Lilith does, which heavily abuses the software renderer to the point where it only runs in a ZDoom 2.8.1 environment (Or a descendant, such as RZDoom).

 

I have no personal qualms with the ZScript behavior, but i do call it nifty and the entire ordeal as being totally anotak - In fact i come to expect that something off (in a good way) is happening when a new release is near.

 

You can call that stupid behavior but to me that just needlessly escalates things and detracts from the topic at hand.

 

For what it is worth, Kinsie's suggestion and Nash's are a best shot-compromise. I am highlighting it again aswell because i feel the suggestion is not discussed enough; Instead most of the focus is on Will Graf have a change of a heart with a PR? or Won't Graf just read this thread and have a response especially when we have independent results detailing that the vast majority does not like standard texture filtering on as an argument.