Doom64 EX 2.1 Released

[_bruce_]

Kaiser said:

I can't seem to repro this. Are you getting this issue if you saved normally through the menu? (Hit escape, select save game, etc)

Same thing - saved via escape and save game...



It's the sound library initializing. Not much I can do with that. What's your specs?

Athlon64 2.2 Ghz. Onboard sound card(cheapo). I suspect the sound card to be a crock because in ChocoDoom I often get samples at maximum volume from time to time.

[Kaiser]

I am working on the bug. Turns out it's the uncapped framerate that's causing the menu to be included as part of the thumbnail. I will need to do a save on a new game tic rather during that tic.

[natt]

_bruce_ said:

Athlon64 2.2 Ghz.

Until a week ago I was using a Pentium 4 2.6Ghz as my main machine, and on it fluidsynth can take quite a while (3 seconds at least) to load soundfonts, depending on how large they are.

[Kaiser]

natt said:

Until a week ago I was using a Pentium 4 2.6Ghz as my main machine, and on it fluidsynth can take quite a while (3 seconds at least) to load soundfonts, depending on how large they are.

That's pretty scary. I hate to imagine how long it would take on low end machines. Seems like the way soundfonts are loaded could be optimized in fluidsynth.

[SteelPH]

Not sure if this can be considered a bug or not, but some of the sounds(and samples from the music) are playing much quieter than others. Most evident when firing the shotgun or the chaingun, which are very easily drowned out by the pain sounds of the monsters you're shooting.

[Kaiser]

Yeah I am debating whatever or not this is normal. I am basically going by what I am gathering from the data that defines Doom64's instruments. From what I am seeing, this seems legit. I also tried running the emulator and just noticed that the pistol/shotgun sounds are quiet as well.

[Kaiser]

Updated:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18609/Kex_Engine.zip


Thumbnail issue fixed and fixed some Wadgen issues regarding to 64-bit operating systems.

[smoke.tetsu]

Kaiser said:

I am actually done with the new sound code. The only thing that I need to do to it is simply fixing bugs (if there are any). Though do you get a similar issue if you ran prboom with fluidsynth support?

I've never tried PrBoom as I'm a doomsday man myself but I may just do that to test out what you are talking about seeing if fluidsynth has the same issue with it.

[_bruce_]

Hey - snapshots are perfect now!
Didn't know about the fluid synth stuff... so processors get faster to shorten load times of sound libraries... must be a John Lennon thing.

[Dragonsbrethren]

A suggestion for WadGen: Instead of having a pulldown with separate selections for the three common N64 ROM extensions, why not just make all three shown by default?

[Kaiser]

Dragonsbrethren said:

A suggestion for WadGen: Instead of having a pulldown with separate selections for the three common N64 ROM extensions, why not just make all three shown by default?

Done
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18609/Kex_Engine.zip

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

The launcher's resolution options are quite limited. Any chance of custom resolution input?

[Dragonsbrethren]

Kaiser said:

Done

Cool.

I just noticed that the player's arrow doesn't rotate when the automap isn't in follow mode.

[chillzilla]

I love a lot of changes in 2.0b.

My only problem is that I'm noticing some lag in 2.0b that wasn't there in 1.4. I thought it was the new sound, but I started the game with the nosound and nomusic option in the launcher and I still saw lag randomly appear.

I wish I could do better to explain the lag. When the game starts it runs smooth, but once I grab the shotgun and the first pinky demon appears is when the game will first start to slow. It isn't a stutter, but everything feels like it is less responsive. After a bit, it will pick up speed again. This repeats a bunch of times in the first level.

I should mention that I use a netbook. I have no issues with 1.4 on this low-powered machine.

Anyways, just wanted to share.

Also, Thank you so much for doing this. I absolutely love Doom64 and it is great to play it on a PC with a keyboard and mouse. I can finally pack away my N64 because I have Dooom64 at the ready on my netbook. THANK YOU!

[Dragonsbrethren]

I didn't catch this before you did the official 2.0 release, but the automap always uses space for panning instead of the use key. (I didn't even know about the use key panning until I read about it in the tech pdf.)

[Kaiser]

It's hardcoded unfortunately, much like 'f' being hardcoded for follow mode and tab for toggling the map on and off.

These things will be bind-able in future releases.

[MG_Man]

I know save games are broke, but has the format changed so much to be unrecognizable?

I am reminded of Quake 4 when a update broke save games, but instead of being completely broken, when loading said save the player would essentially restart the map the save was on but kept his weapons.

Is this possible to be done in Doom 64 EX? I guess it seems like too much work for very little gain (the same effect can be done with cheats) especially so since it was only in beta before, but I was just curious.

Other thoughts:
1) "Smooth" (uncapped) framerate seems to stutter, as if it's reverting back to 35FPS every quarter second or so, this seems to be independent of v-sync. If I recall, this has always happened since the option was added.

2) When "Sky Pitch" is enabled, the sky still vertically scrolls in the opposite direction than it should

3) The resolution 1280x1024 is no longer selectable from the menu. I know this happened in a much earlier build, but I don't think it's been mentioned until now. Perhaps it can be put in a "5:4" aspect ratio category?

4) Will there be an option to scale down the opacity of the context highlighting feature? I like it a lot, but it seems a bit too bright for my tastes

5) Concerning the sample volume issue. Maybe you can add an option that makes sounds stop previous sounds if from the same actor (a la Vanilla Doom) This would greatly cut-down the volume of overlapping pain sounds, for example.

Otherwise, I'm very impressed, especially that you got music working again out-of-the box. I also appreciate the damage indicator feature.

I look forward to future releases.

[Avoozl]

Is it just me or is the lighting not exactly like the original game?

[Gez]

It's difficult to replicate the hardware. Especially if, for example, your PC is connected to an LCD screen while your console was connected to a CRT.

[lucius]

Doomsfall said:

Is it just me or is the lighting not exactly like the original game?

If you feel the lighting is off, I would suggest finding an area that highlights the issues you see the most. Then take some comparison screenshots (use an emulator for this if you need to). Then point out as precisely as possible what you perceive the problem(s) to be. Are the colors off? Maybe color interpolation? Fog?

[sector666]

Very excited that EX 2.0 is out.

Unfortunately I've come across a control bug in the current version (downloaded from the EX site today), using default bindings.

If you're using the keyboard only (no mouse), and you're holding fire+run (ctrl+shift), pressing forward does not move you forward. If you're holding forward already before pressing both fire & run at the same time then you keep moving forward. But pressing forward while those keys are held does nothing.

The same behavior happens when emulating those buttons on a gamepad as it does on the keyboard. The problem doesn't show up when using the mouse to fire, or when emulating the mouse as the fire button on a gamepad. So it would seem that the ctrl key is screwing it up for some reason. But only when shift is also held.


On another note, I'm curious if there will be an option to have the music continue playing when the menu is up. I actually find it kind of jarring to have it stop whenever I have to bring the menu up.

[esselfortium]

sector666, do you have that problem with the same key combination in other source ports? It sounds like it could be a problem a lot of modern keyboards have, in which they somehow aren't able to register certain combinations of keys when pressed at the same time.

[sector666]

That's why I mentioned that the same problem happens when emulating the buttons on a gamepad, because that means it isn't due to anything keyboard related. I can't recall encountering that problem on any other ports I've used either.

[Megamur]

sector666 said:

On another note, I'm curious if there will be an option to have the music continue playing when the menu is up. I actually find it kind of jarring to have it stop whenever I have to bring the menu up.

Standard DOOM 64 behavior.

[Brewtal_Legend]

Is the xbox 360 gamepad the only controller supported? I wanted to try playing with my logitech dual action gamepad but it didn't work. :( Do you plan to add support for other controllers in the future?

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

Try this: http://code.google.com/p/x360ce/

[sector666]

I have a logitech dual action as well. For another option you can use Joy to Key to emulate the PC keys. As long as you emulate mouse for shooting instead of ctrl you won't run into any problems.

[Brewtal_Legend]

sector666 said:

I have a logitech dual action as well. For another option you can use Joy to Key to emulate the PC keys. As long as you emulate mouse for shooting instead of ctrl you won't run into any problems.

I'm familiar with joy to key and used to use it. I switched over to xpadder since it was a little more user friendly and had a little more functionality.

I still use xpadder for roguelikes and some old dos games, but never liked the mouse emulation too much. Especially because in order to adjust sensitivity, I need to exit doom and and get back in. I like how zdoom is set up where I can adjust the sensitivity if eac axis individually in-game. Much easier. Plus I only use the x axis on the right joystick to turn. I don't use the y axis as well on the same stick for looking up and down. I like how gzdoom lets you map both joysticks and the d-pad. I use left stick for movement, right stick for turning, and the d-pad for looking up and down.

[Avoozl]

I compaired the game to the rom on an emulator and noticed that there seems to be dark distance fog on the first level which doesn't seem to appear the say way on EX.

Edit: Actually I think it was the fog setting with glide64 which caused over exaggurated fog.

[Kaiser]

That's why I don't like to rely on emulators for fog since most of them are inaccurate. The closest is Rice's video plugin for Project 64 but it's still not reliable.

The fog is probably the only thing that may be considered inaccurate right now in doom64ex.