Heretic demos, mouselook, and sourceports

[plums]

This is not important, it's just been on my mind lately.

 

Heretic demo files can record varying speeds of looking up and down, similar to (but not exactly the same as) left and right turns. But vanilla Heretic normally allows you to look up and down with the keyboard only, which changes your view angle at a set speed.

 

Because of this, any source port that is vanilla demo compatible, but also allows vertical mouselook, limits the speed that you can look up/down to what you can do with the keyboard when recording a demo. (Chocolate Heretic and Hexen also limits analog gamepad looking up/down to this speed.)

 

However, a while ago @xttl wrote a utility that allows you to do full mouselook in vanilla Heretic, by way of Doom/Heretic's external control driver feature, which allows demo-compatible looking up and down at increased speeds.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/85064-mouselookfreelook-for-vanilla-heretic-hexen-and-strife/

 

Here is a quick example demo: hmouse.lmp

 

So: Would using xttl's ravmouse invalidate a Heretic demo from being submitted to DSDA? (Other than as a TAS.)

And if so, is "fast mouselook in demos" an option that any source port authors might add anyhow? Quick 180° keyboard turns are no longer allowed IIRC yet many ports still allow that as a key.

 

I don't think I have ever seen a competitive Heretic demo look up/down at all, so this is probably all theoretical anyhow.

[andrewj]

The ticcmd_t in Heretic gives 4 bits for vertical look and 4 bits for flying, packed into a single byte.

 

For vertical look, it uses +/-1 for initial speed and +/-2 when it speeds up, but higher values are supported by the ticcmd_t (and hence by demos), but not slower rates.

 

Whether faster speeds should be allowed by DSDA or not is a policy decision for them to make.  If they don't allow 180 degree turns, then I guess they would not allow this either.

Edited January 15 by andrewj

[PVS]

If this mouselook is fully compatible with original game, then, I think, such demos would be more interesting to watch, it’s like a "new look" for Heretic demorecording. Although, it requires training and habit from speedrunners, when recording such demos.

For me personally, monsters/secrets count on HUD under demorecording - this is 100 times more cheat than this "original mouselook", so I don't see much advantage here for DSDA runs. But I recommend recording more test demos, long ones, with a lot of monsters, to be more sure - that this mouselook do not break auto-center, auto-aim, etc. vs original game. One 5 sec demo is not enough for this.