Source Ports personal deal breakers

[LuciferSam86]

12 minutes ago, Incognitonightraven said:

Makes you want to clean your eyes when watching that blurry effect, honesty it looks horrible in game, which is why VKDoom wont have that issue

That for sure , but on my first days I was enjoying gzdoom with texture filtering, then something changed my mind so no filtering anymore even in games is supposed to be there like Q2, Half life and tomb raider 2 

[CacoKnight]

4 minutes ago, LuciferSam86 said:

That for sure , but on my first days I was enjoying gzdoom with texture filtering, then something changed my mind so no filtering anymore even in games is supposed to be there like Q2, Half life and tomb raider 2 

Same, maybe that's why he's keeping it on by default, he thinks and wants people to go through the discovery of the real Doom how it was on their own. I liked my personal journey with that port and how I came to the conclusion that I like the old graphics more, I am still not 100% opposite of having it on by default.

 

I don't like where this thread is is going, most attacks to GZDoom feel personal and meh, don't care at all, try to stay objective. Also I am not looking for alternatives of GZDoom, I just like to play with all the ports settings and keep the ones I like because, as I said before, each port has its own beauty. And for me, GZDoom is there to stay.

Edited November 18, 2023 by CacoKnight

[Darkcrafter07]

GZDoom because it packs a huge amount of features that no other engine has, it allowed to me to create something I could call a mapset of my dreams and maybe even some other people dreams. Huge beautiful spaces, music in all formats starting with FM OPL3 and ending with soundfonts and ogg opus compression. The only drawback it gets is perhaps an optimization and some rendering techniques that are older than some babies here. Like it's ogl 4 and it can not do alpha testing, reversed depth, no lods. The maps are still 1 layer except for stacked sectors but it's a huge pita to edit them. In other words, it could have been even better than it is now but that requires for coders to have some more motivation. How? Money, probably!

[LuciferSam86]

9 minutes ago, CacoKnight said:

Same, maybe that's why he's keeping it on by default, he thinks and wants people to go through the discovery of the real Doom how it was on their own. I liked my personal journey with that port and how I came to the conclusion that I like the old graphics more, I am still not 100% opposite of having it on by default.

 

I don't like where this thread is is going, most attacks to GZDoom feel personal and meh, don't care at all, try to stay objective. Also I am not looking for alternatives of GZDoom, I just like to play with all the ports settings and keep the ones I like because, as I said before, each port has its own beauty. And for me, GZDoom is there to stay.

I think changing that default is kinda too late , and then you have the other side complain. 

The best course would be a new MAPINFO setting. Right now I'm looking at the parser and how it works, let's see if in the week I can make a PR for that. 

[CacoKnight]

5 hours ago, Professor Spastig said:

 Yes, a few clicks shouldnt be a thing if sticking to the classics like the DOS games, when I first play Doom from the DOS, there is no such thing as a texture filter, its just you killing monsters while admiring the beautiful sprites they made in game, that is the retro style game I am expecting to play when trying out this source but no effect, that texture filter is trash in my opinion, whoever thought this was a good idea have no taste for sure when it comes to oldies and goldies games, if its from ideal, bad idea to follow through, or for practical of morals, bad morals to follow as well. Any case, if I was to be in someone shoes of developing a port engine, I should think about what make a retro game special that is being appreciated then to ruin it of how it is here. Whoever make this GZDoom ports needs to take a break and reflect his action but if he is feels very strongly on doing what he thinks is best then he will fall behind and frankly, it will wilter away in obscurity. 

It's just a damn game man.

 

I am old enough to remember when Doom came out, I have vivid memories of me playing Wolfenstein 3D at a friend's computer but not really Doom, so I haven't touched it for 30 years but how many other games I've played in the mean time? I've actually started checking Doom 5 months ago for the first time because my son was obsessed with the "Doom runs on everything meme" for years, so I'm like ok let's check "this old game" and see what kind of drugs everyone is on. Downloaded GZDoom, I had to learn what an IWAD, PWAD and all that is and you know what, it was kinda cool to see new graphics, moving up and down (which I remembered you couldn't do on Doom), jump, crouch etc. and only after a while I started to slowly disable all that stuff and playing more and more with the settings making it more vanilla because I just love how vanilla Doom feels.

 

What I am getting at is, maybe people that never actually played Doom will give it a chance right because of those textures and most will navigate through the settings and how it feels the same way I did. That's why I'm still not 100% sure it's a bad choice for ONE PORT (not really because I saw other ports having even worse abominations) to have that.

Edited November 18, 2023 by CacoKnight

[LuciferSam86]

46 minutes ago, Professor Spastig said:

Oh, you can do that? Will be be aprrove?

I'm not a C++ dev, just a C# dev, so I might take a bit more time but I was able to make a new Zscript function for damage modify like the AbsorbDamage just for fun. 

 

Let's see for the mapinfo part , and if not accepted, I just learned some c++ 😁

[dpJudas]

15 hours ago, LexiMax said:

Out of curiosity, do you have a VKDoom bugtracker anywhere?  I did run into a crash when trying to switch from fullscreen to windowed mode from within the game.

There is no issue tracker. The crash bug in 0.9 has been fixed a long time ago. We haven't made a new public release since due to incompatibilities between the master branch and zdray, which would confuse modders checking out the lightmaps feature. It is a bit annoying but it is what it is.

[CacoKnight]

The video Romero shows on https://romero.com/sigil is with the textures enabled.

Edited November 18, 2023 by CacoKnight

[Scuba Steve]

5 hours ago, CacoKnight said:

It's just a damn game man.

 

This is a specialty forum dedicated to Doom, debating the "damn game" is literally the entire point of this thread.

 

Let's be honest; at this point, the best outcome is VKDoom replacing GZDoom. The port is maintained by people who actually understand and care about Doom itself and are closely connected with the community and what it wants. The port is listening to indie devs who want to build games using GZDoom and implementing features they need to build their games. The devs are also excited to overhaul GZDoom with modern features like an improved settings menus and a more accurate default presentation. The fact that GZDoom needs to be drug kicking and screaming into being a modern game engine as opposed to a byzantine hobbyist port is, frankly, embarrassing in 2023.

[CacoKnight]

My previous comment explains exactly why I said "it's just a damn game" and life is more about not taking things personally, even the creator of said "damn game" doesn't care about those things.

Edited November 19, 2023 by CacoKnight

[Dynamo]

I could be wrong here, but last I checked, VKDoom is not going to prioritize things such as DeHackEd support, MBF21 support, older ZDoom mods, and so on and so forth. I fail to see how it can be a GZDoom replacement then for anything besides commercial indie games or mods made specifically for it, in which case you wouldn't be using GZDoom either way because it wouldn't be able to support all the features of said games or mods. VkDoom would (and this is a perfectly legitimate approach by them, by the way, they can and should carve their own niche if that's what they want) simply cut off a substantial portion of the Doom mods people play readily in GZDoom. I question whether I would be able to play Valiant or Ancient Aliens in VKDoom. Think about the implications of that.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Dynamo

[Scuba Steve]

30 minutes ago, CacoKnight said:

The video Romero shows on https://romero.com/sigil is with the textures enabled.

 

https://x.com/romero/status/1679631270332997632?s=20

[Scuba Steve]

6 minutes ago, Dynamo said:

I could be wrong here, but last I checked, VKDoom is not going to prioritize things such as DeHackEd support, MBF21 support, older ZDoom mods, and so on and so forth. I fail to see how it can be a GZDoom replacement then for anything besides commercial indie games or mods made specifically for it, in which case you wouldn't be using GZDoom either way because it wouldn't be able to support all the features of said games or mods. VkDoom would (and this is a perfectly legitimate approach by them, by the way, they can and should carve their own niche if that's what they want) simply cut off a substantial portion of the Doom mods people play readily in GZDoom. I question whether I would be able to play Valiant or Ancient Aliens in VKDoom. Think about the implications of that.

 

If that's the case, you're right, it would make a lousy GZDoom replacement. The best solution then is to allow the newer developers who actually care about Doom and the community itself to take over as the lead developers of GZDoom.

[CacoKnight]

4 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

 

https://x.com/romero/status/1679631270332997632?s=20

A message from July, and yet, the video on the main website for millions of people to see is with the filtering on, right before Doom's 30th anniversary and Sigil 2 release. That's my point, I obviously prefer the filtering off but it's not a big deal and like I already said it may help people going through the whole process to re-discover "the Doom vanilla experience" after playing with the settings but at the same time it may attract new people.

Edited November 18, 2023 by CacoKnight

[LuciferSam86]

21 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

 

If that's the case, you're right, it would make a lousy GZDoom replacement. The best solution then is to allow the newer developers who actually care about Doom and the community itself to take over as the lead developers of GZDoom.

Hoping to not sound harsh or disrespectful, as a developer that sounds disrespectful pooping like this on other work especially if done for a hobby.

 

Of course, some features will never implemented like disabling the ability to save manually ( I would not accept such PR, too).

 

IMHO costs nothing to fork the project, other devs might come if they find your alternative interesting, no need to "take over" projects, because they are "wrong" and there is nothing to "take over", the source is there.

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by LuciferSam86

[Firebert]

4 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

The best solution then is to allow the newer developers who actually care about Doom and the community itself to take over as the lead developers of GZDoom.

Does any developer of free software really have to care about the interests of its userbase? To even call this a problem seems entitled. Graf Zhal isn't doing the Doom community a disservice by prioritizing modern features. There doesn't need to be a "take over" because GZDoom isn't the only source port.

[dpJudas]

6 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

If that's the case, you're right, it would make a lousy GZDoom replacement. The best solution then is to allow the newer developers who actually care about Doom and the community itself to take over as the lead developers of GZDoom.

Who are these mythical newer developers you speak of and why haven't they clicked the fork button yet? Surely if the Doom community is so upset of how GZDoom is run they'd flock to the port right away! What's stopping them?

[Scuba Steve]

Yeah, none of you are actually reading or listening to everything that's been written. Durr of course Graf can do whatever he wants, but we're also free to bag on his bone-headed decisions. That's the cost of making your work publicly available.

 

There's a passionate group of people who all contribute to the GZDoom codebase and I'd rather see them in charge. They actually care about the game and the community and would be better maintainers of the most popular port. GZDoom really is just being held hostage by a lead programed with no artistic talent who has no real clue what developers and end-users of the port actually want. It's literally the definition of a disservice. The fact that @Graf Zahl goes radio silent every time someone raises constructive criticism speaks volumes about how little he actually cares about GZDoom and its end-user experience being dogshit.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Scuba Steve

[dasho]

1 hour ago, Scuba Steve said:

 The fact that @Graf Zahl goes radio silent every time someone raises constructive criticism speaks volumes about how little he actually cares about GZDoom and its end-user experience being dogshit.

 

Yeah, can't believe he didn't reply to you implying he was a "fucking moron"

[Arsinikk]

2 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

There's a passionate group of people who all contribute to the GZDoom codebase and I'd rather see them in charge. They actually care about the game and the community and would be better maintainers of the most popular port. GZDoom really is just being held hostage by a lead programed with no artistic talent who has no real clue what developers and end-users of the port actually want. It's literally the definition of a disservice.

I think you're selling short the work that Graf Zahl has done for the GZDoom port and the community. Being the lead developer he has got the port to the state it is and has successfully made it as the most popular Doom source port.

 

From my interactions with him, he does seem to care about GZDoom users and fixing bugs in the port. I've submitted many Github comments posting about Vanilla centric issues, that he's actually addressed and fixed. Stuff like the janky donut functionality and the ability for ghost monsters to actually work.

 

I think it's somewhat fair to stay firm on certain things we wants. While I personally would be a fan of turning off texturing filtering, I do realise that GZDoom is his port, and since he gives an option to turn it off, it's less of an issue. The main point of contention could be argued that it being the default option, leads to new players playing with it on as it is the default. However, your comments on this thread are more annoying than constructive.

 

2 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

The fact that @Graf Zahl goes radio silent every time someone raises constructive criticism speaks volumes about how little he actually cares about GZDoom and its end-user experience being dogshit.

To be honest, I respect Graf Zahl for not speaking out immediately on things. It shows a level of maturity for him to not be quick and reactionary. He's obviously aware that many people feel a certain way about texture filtering. I'm not sure what you want him to say, as he could just say how he feels and say he's keeping it as the default. However, that would just cause more conflict. It's actually better in this case to say nothing at all.

 

I know you want him to say that he'll change his mind, but to be honest, that's all you want him to say if he speaks up.

 

Plus to be quite honest, I'm a little annoyed that we are talking about this in the "Source Ports personal deal breakers" thread, since it's an option you can just turn off. If there's anything that GZDoom excels at, it's giving the user the freedom to customise their Doom experience in whatever way they like. This literally is not a "deal breaker" since it can be switched off, so I find this topic hijacking to be distasteful.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Arsinikk

[Individualised]

I very much find some of the people regularly vocal about turning texture filtering off voice their concerns in a rather immature way. I don't blame Graf Zahl from completely disconnecting from the topic altogether, he has his reasoning - which I understand even if I think texture filtering looks like shit in Doom unless the assets were made for it (like Doom 64) - and continuing to argue over and over brings no benefit to him.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Individualised

[Darkcrafter07]

Deal braker #1 - infinitely tall monsters not fixed. I can't run under or above flying assholes to dodge their products of hate more effectively.

Deal braker #2 - no OPL2/3 music. I don't like how roland-gm sounds, especially the fact it's the same sound font in every game that wasn't used to voice these midis.

Deal braker #3 - no free mouse look and crosshair. I know my perfect order at aiming those crowds, when to hit a ground based one first and when the flying another second.

Deal braker #4 - original resolution only. In the age of big monitors it's becoming a bit of a pain staring at those 10x10 pixels you know. 512x384 or 640x400 are the least resolutions that source ports must support out of the box.

Deal braker #5 - no widescreen support. We got wide monitors and having that black space not used is something I can tolerate only on vanilla exes.

Deal braker #6 - vsync can not be turned off. I absolutely hate vscync slaying your reaction time on slow hz monitors.

Deal braker #7 - there's no jump and crouch. I play vanilla campaign with jumps as it gives me more freedom. I crouch sine Duke3D times to dodge some attacks ffs.

[Arsinikk]

24 minutes ago, Individualised said:

I very much find some of the people regularly vocal about turning texture filtering off voice their concerns in a rather immature way. I don't blame Graf Zahl from completely disconnecting from the topic altogether, he has his reasoning - which I understand even if I think texture filtering looks like shit in Doom unless the assets were made for it (like Doom 64) - and continuing to argue over and over brings no benefit to him.

Don't get me wrong, I don't see anything wrong with criticising or discussing the topic of texture filtering. I think it's still important for people to voice their opinions on the matter. So I'd actually disagree on the idea of not continuing to talk about it, as then it may seem like people are ok with it.

 

But my problem is two fold.

1) If you want someone to listen to you, don't be an asshole to them. It just leads to them not wanting to engage with you further. Speaking obnoxiously loud doesn't make your voice more important, it just shows how inconsiderate you are of other people's views.

2) This is not the thread to talk about this. GZDoom gives you the option to turn it off, and in the "Source Ports personal deal breakers" thread, the discussion should be on features that unavailable in a source port. Texture Filtering can be turned off, therefore it is not a "deal breaker".

Edited November 19, 2023 by Arsinikk

[DNSKILL5]

If source port machine broke it’s a deal breaker understandable have a great day type of thing. 

[baja blast rd.]

On 11/2/2023 at 11:26 PM, No-Man Baugh said:

God, please not another GZDoom tirade!

I like this thread so far, I don't want to see this get locked

 

That can be avoided by someone reporting a derail early when it's still short and can be split off. When there's more derail than thread, there's no choice but for the thread to either get locked or stay a mess. First report was today, which is very late. :P

[bofu]

No DEHEXTRA or MBF21 support, or lack of interest in implementing new standards. I don't care if something is behind the curve a bit and is playing catch-up, but the instant a source port says "yeah, we could support this new standard that's being adopted across a bunch of other source ports, but we don't see it as important and you can just use those source ports if you want it supported," there's a not insignificant chance I drop it.

 

I've been pretty happy with my collection of source ports lately, though. Doom Retro, DSDA, GZDoom, Woof, etc all seem very keen on keeping up, and I like it.

[Trov]

6 hours ago, Scuba Steve said:

There's a passionate group of people who all contribute to the GZDoom codebase and I'd rather see them in charge. They actually care about the game and the community and would be better maintainers of the most popular port. GZDoom really is just being held hostage by a lead programed with no artistic talent who has no real clue what developers and end-users of the port actually want. It's literally the definition of a disservice. The fact that @Graf Zahl goes radio silent every time someone raises constructive criticism speaks volumes about how little he actually cares about GZDoom and its end-user experience being dogshit.

I don't think this is a completely fair characterization. He is certainly stubborn (I remember back in the day how reluctant he was to try using this hot new thing called vertex buffer objects rather than gl immediate mode) but I think the biggest thing holding GZDoom back is not Graf but the fact that so many users will bitch and moan about their favorite esoteric options disappearing if the settings menu gets simplified, which is a tough road to walk. This has already been seen with the recent attempts at doing just that, and even the "passionate group of people who all contribute to the GZDoom codebase" can attest to that.

Maybe the right option is to do it anyway and tell those users to get stuffed, but that's just doing what you're accusing him of now.

To Graf's credit I think he has an undeserved reputation of not caring about compatability, which is something he's done a lot of work on. I think other ports like Boom/DSDA/etc approach of complevels is stone age bullshit requiring the user to do most of the work to ensure the level they are playing is completable, and that GZDoom's approach of matching edge cases and applying the appropriate compatibility settings is the right way to go.

 

Point is, not just devs but also users of all ports are also passionate about their settings menus and there is no answer that satisfies everyone.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Trov

[CacoKnight]

On 11/19/2023 at 12:43 AM, bofu said:

I've been pretty happy with my collection of source ports lately, though. Doom Retro, DSDA, GZDoom, Woof, etc all seem very keen on keeping up, and I like it.

Nice, I play with all of them in the first post but we keep the same ones saved: DOOM Retro, DSDA, GZDoom and Nugget.

 

Once I started tweaking with DOOM Retro settings I started to like it more and more. I just copy the Vanilla cmd settings from here https://github.com/bradharding/doomretro/blob/master/res/VANILLA.lmp and change these: https://rentry.org/awt87khw.

 

Fun times!

Edited March 8 by CacoKnight

[dpJudas]

7 hours ago, bofu said:

No DEHEXTRA or MBF21 support, or lack of interest in implementing new standards. I don't care if something is behind the curve a bit and is playing catch-up, but the instant a source port says "yeah, we could support this new standard that's being adopted across a bunch of other source ports, but we don't see it as important and you can just use those source ports if you want it supported," there's a not insignificant chance I drop it.

And you should drop it if it doesn't support what you want to do. I think it is important to remember in this context though that supporting these things aren't free. Someone has to code and maintain that support.

 

The funny thing about Graf is that he's always been flamed for how GZDoom plays Doom maps, but he is actually the guy that implements all this compatibility. You'd never see me do it, for example, because that's just not why I'm coding on Doom source ports.

[Scuba Steve]

A lot of you are new members, so you might not realize we've been trying to have "polite" discussions about GZDoom for TWENTY years only to be rudely dismissed or ignored. For over a decade, other far more passionate people have wanted to improve GZDoom only to be stymied by someone who has, despite being an exceedingly talented programmer, a poor sense of design. He's been banned for antagonistic and rude comments about other's work (because it breaks the engine), creating suck-puppet accounts even threading to leave and take the port down.

 

Yeah, I might seem like an asshole, but nothing I've said is untrue, and these problems have only grown because they've gone unaddressed for so long.