Things about Doom you just found out

[Azuruish]

MetroidJunkie said:

I don't understand speed runners that have to abuse glitches, anyway, isn't that basically the same as cheating? Seriously, I could use IDCLIP and just make a beeline for the exit, that's not that much different in my opinion since glitches weren't intended by the developer. If you want to speed run, do so legitimately. See how fast you are when you can't exploit bugs.

What?
If you are late to school and you have two ways: 1) jump over the fence and cut 20 minutes or run over the road and lose these 20 minutes, what you chose?. As i see you chose second way because it's legitimately.
For me is really exciting to see glitches (for example) in Half-Life 2 when player fly really really fast. Purpose of speedrunning is exit as fast as you can, not move legitimatily as you can.
Bugs != Cheats. Know the difference.

[Xerge]

I just found out about "Terry wads".

[Obsidian]

Xerge said:

I just found out about "Terry wads".

Sad, isn't it?

[Xerge]

Obsidian said:

Sad, isn't it?

Basically the "rick rolling" of wads, huh.

[kb1]

Graf Zahl said:

All I can compare is the GZDoom download numbers with PrBoom's. GZDoom had > 100000 downloads in the last 12 months, and that's not even counting Linux users who compile the code themselves and users of the devbuilds.

Now you got to add ZDoom users and Zandronum users who use that port for single play, too.

Last time I checked, PrBoom+ had 300 downloads weekly. GZDoom's official builds had 7000 downloads in the last 10 days.

Yeah, but PrBoom doesn't change on a daily basis. Other than bugfixes, it's a pretty mature product with most of its features already built and working.

[Graf Zahl]

The official GZDoom builds also do not change on a daily basis. The 7000 downloads are for a version that's 8 weeks old, so these were hardly the normal upgraders.

[TendaMonsta]

MetroidJunkie said:

I don't understand speed runners that have to abuse glitches, anyway, isn't that basically the same as cheating?

Not even close.

MetroidJunkie said:

Seriously, I could use IDCLIP and just make a beeline for the exit, that's not that much different in my opinion

One requires knowledge/skill to execute while the other does not.

MetroidJunkie said:

since glitches weren't intended by the developer.

It doesn't matter if they weren't intended by the developers. A lot of professional play is not even what the developers had in mind within their own game.

MetroidJunkie said:

If you want to speed run, do so legitimately. See how fast you are when you can't exploit bugs.

We have a -record parameter for legitimate play where you can't cheat. What more do you want? Also some of these bugs/glitches actually raise the skill-ceiling (why would you want to lower the skill ceiling because you simply don't like people taking advantage of the engine)

[kb1]

Graf Zahl said:

The official GZDoom builds also do not change on a daily basis. The 7000 downloads are for a version that's 8 weeks old, so these were hardly the normal upgraders.

I think you missed my point, but that's ok. If I want to play a ZDoom wad, I download the latest engine along with it, cause that's usually the advice given. But that's not really the case with "limit-removing" wads and PrBoom. Once you download PrBoom, you're typically good to go. And, if you are editing for (G)ZDoom, you download the latest and greatest, just to have a complete feature set.

(G)ZDoom is clearly very popular, but, less-well known is the fact that Chocolate and PrBoom(+) are comparably popular as well, for what that's worth.

[Danfun64]

Xerge said:

Basically the "rick rolling" of wads, huh.

Not really. Rickrolling is mostly harmless. A more accurate comparison would be to screamer pranks. Both screamers and terry wads lull the watcher/player into a false sense of security, when suddenly loud and offensive imagery interrupts whatever was going on, and it quickly becomes obvious that said load and offensive imagery was the main reason the wad/prank existed.

[Hell Theatre]

kb1 said:

(G)ZDoom is clearly very popular, but, less-well known is the fact that Chocolate and PrBoom(+) are comparably popular as well, for what that's worth.

I think you suffer a bit from insider bias.
Ask any normal person who just casually plays a bit of Doom now and then, and they do not even know about these ports.

Remember: We are at Doomworld here, and in the short time I have known this site the one thing that has sprung to mind is that the makeup of this community is in no way representative to how others perceive Doom. Casual Doomers can be divided into two groups: Those who are merely interested in playing the game tend to download Doomsday, those who are interested in all the exciting new content mostly choose GZDoom, a few choose regular ZDoom,

No, they mostly do not think that software rendering is the best option, they even less believe that having an engine like Chocolate Doom makes sense, with all its limitations and intentionally preserved bugs. What they see is "GZDoom can do all PrBoom does, and even looks better" and act accordingly.

And those casual users do play user made content, they just don't bother to discuss it here because, well, the crowd here may be a bit too fundamentalist.

On the other hand I believe that long term download statistics of an official download site tell a lot. Especially when the age of the latest download options differ only by a bit more than one month - PrBoom's current version has been online since January 2016, GZDoom's since February 2016.

And PrBoom+'s weekly download numbers have been steady at ~350, but even 20% of that is downloads of older versions, meaning that it has to be discarded as noise made by users who most likely did multiple downloads for comparison purposes.

GZDoom had more downloads like that the last DAY.

[Xerge]

Danfun64 said:

Not really. Rickrolling is mostly harmless. A more accurate comparison would be to screamer pranks. Both screamers and terry wads lull the watcher/player into a false sense of security, when suddenly loud and offensive imagery interrupts whatever was going on, and it quickly becomes obvious that said load and offensive imagery was the main reason the wad/prank existed.

I also just found out that there has been a problem with those and the archives.

[VGamingJunkie]

Terry WADs are lazy, anyway. If you're going to make joke WADs, then put some effort into making it creative.

[Graf Zahl]

Jokewads that assume that something intentionally bad is supposed to be funny suck anyway.

The worst are those where some effort is put into creating something really bad. That's truly wasted work.

[Da Werecat]

Hell Theatre said:

Those who are merely interested in playing the game tend to download Doomsday, those who are interested in all the exciting new content mostly choose GZDoom, a few choose regular ZDoom,

I thought Doomsday was a niche port for the last 7-10 years. After all, Brutal Doom is "Doom at its best" these days.

[VGamingJunkie]

Graf Zahl said:

Jokewads that assume that something intentionally bad is supposed to be funny suck anyway.

The worst are those where some effort is put into creating something really bad. That's truly wasted work.

You'd think that other forms of comedy didn't exist at all and that you couldn't possibly have comedy outside of just being bad. Doom the Parody may not be particularly great but at least there was some effort in trying to be funny outside of just being purposefully crap. Some of the moments like the health bonus gags and the Cyberdemon blowing himself up were actually a little amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvverf2zAY0#t=32s

[Graf Zahl]

Da Werecat said:

I thought Doomsday was a niche port for the last 7-10 years. After all, Brutal Doom is "Doom at its best" these days.

Yes, you'd think that when looking what's going on at Doomworld. And yet, its download numbers at their secondary download site at Sourceforce are more than Legacy, PrBoom and PrBoom+ combined. One has to wonder how high numbers on their primary site are then.

Doomsday's audience is a complete different one, though, mostly composed of those who want to replay the original game with as much "HD" content as possible.

Therefore it's not really surprising that the port doesn't make much noise here.

[Da Werecat]

I sincerely hope that 3D models aren't very popular with these people.

[VGamingJunkie]

My only slight issue with 3D models, at least in GZDoom, is that they've got virtually no shading on them whatsoever outside of sector lighting. I understand the lack of dynamic lighting but even just a generic always downward in direction shade on the model itself where it's not shadow casting on anything else, just has some basic shading, would look much better than being one solid shade. You pretty much have to bake shadows into the texture for it to look as decent as sprites in that aspect and even then you don't have the luxury of having the shadows move with the animation like with sprite frames.

[Graf Zahl]

Da Werecat said:

I sincerely hope that 3D models aren't very popular with these people.

On Doomsday? If the available model packs are any indicator, the important thing is that they HAVE models, not that they fit the game...

[Da Werecat]

MetroidJunkie said:

You pretty much have to bake shadows into the texture for it to look as decent as sprites in that aspect and even then you don't have the luxury of having the shadows move with the animation like with sprite frames.

TBH, that's how models were made when technology wasn't sophisticated enough to provide convincing shading on its own. You couldn't just paint materials on the skin, some fake lighting was necessary.

[VGamingJunkie]

I know but still. I guess it's a trade-off, you get smoother animations and can view them more naturally from many angles but you sacrifice the visual aspect of moving shadows, not to mention the apparent polygonal limits of the format but that's not specifically a GZDoom thing.

[thaquoth]

Graf Zahl said:

Jokewads that assume that something intentionally bad is supposed to be funny suck anyway.

The worst are those where some effort is put into creating something really bad. That's truly wasted work.

Jokewads all too often fall into the category of "anime faces and HITLER isn't that just hilarious" 4chan humour. Sprinkle in some memes and insult a few groups of people, and you got your laugh riot right there. I often wonder if there's anybody that actually genuinely finds that stuff funny.

The other popular category would be "doom community in-jokes" which aren't nearly as irritating, but probably lost on most people.

You know which wad I found genuinely funny in an entirely non-obnoxious way? Pirate Doom, even though you technically wouldn't call it a jokewad I guess. The humour is still mostly referential, but gets a lot of chuckles out of the "Doom + all kinds of pirate related pop culture" pastiche. Also probably helps that it is just really good.

[yakfak]

joke-mapping is a strange idea in general, better to just inject humour into otherwise serious map attempts. one of my faves in this regard is the level from Zones of Fear with a brightly sector-written "DIE" and then a faint, flickering, hard-to-notice "T" off to the right

things about Doom I just found out: the caged imp near the exit of MAP01 is called Ricky

[kuchitsu]

I think joke wads are just very personal works. They are mainly funny for the author and maybe his friends who were laughing together with him while he was mapping. Also they are often more about the comments and other reactions rather than the actual playing experience. Doesn't necessarily mean that they are crap. Maybe you're just not supposed to judge them the way you're used to.

For example, IMO "30000 levels" was made much better by the fact that it had like 4 pages of people going "wtf". Or wow.wad. It's very uninteresting by itself, but if you read the hundreds of comments on idgames you can have a very good laugh. It's sort of like a team effort. The author provides some ground for jokes and other kinds of reactions. Now it's up to people to do the rest of the work.

[Graf Zahl]

kuchitsu said:

Or wow.wad. It's very uninteresting by itself, but if you read the hundreds of comments on idgames you can have a very good laugh.

But that WAD wasn't a joke. It only became famous for its (unintentionally) hilarious text file.

[baja blast rd.]

MetroidJunkie said:

You'd think that other forms of comedy didn't exist at all and that you couldn't possibly have comedy outside of just being bad. Doom the Parody may not be particularly great but at least there was some effort in trying to be funny outside of just being purposefully crap. Some of the moments like the health bonus gags and the Cyberdemon blowing himself up were actually a little amusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvverf2zAY0#t=32s

The text commentary in the video is terrible. It completely fails to be interesting or add anything of value and just makes the video author seem dull and clueless.

[LogicDeLuxe]

Joke maps can be fun if well executed. I enjoyed the doomworld forum wads. And also mock 2 was fun.

[VGamingJunkie]

rdwpa said:

The text commentary in the video is terrible. It completely fails to be interesting or add anything of value and just makes the video author seem dull and clueless.

You can just ignore it, I'm focusing on the WAD itself and how it's actually a little clever in its jokes.

[Csonicgo]

Gez said:

That's because the GENMIDI lumps are different between doom.wad and doom2.wad. Plutonia (when not using the Plutonia MIDI Pack) is a good way to discover these differences.

The GENMIDI lumps in Heretic and Hexen are the default DMX OPL programs, so if you load Doom with Heretic's GENMIDI you'll hear the songs played as they were in this video.

Doom2 music with the Doom GENMIDI can sound either better or much worse. Some changes are just boneheaded - Fretless Bass patch sounds like a gritty synth patch on Doom2 while it sounds expected on Doom1. Why? Who knows?

Doom1 has a bass patch that's pitched an octave too high. Fixed in Doom2. All GENMIDI lumps have a synth string that's pitched an octave too high.

I've been meaning to make an "ultimate" GENMIDI patch that fixes all of this but I haven't had the time. the major fixes I would do:

* Start with the Doom 1 GENMIDI.
* Add the Doom2 electric guitar patch (used in D_RUNNIN) to replace the fuzzy dull guitar patch, and keep the YAMAHA-esque overdriven guitar patch from Doom 1 in place
* Fix the octave problems.
* Add the new double-voiced patches from Doom 2 so that the Wolf3d-esque D_TENSE sounds correct (remove the WAH WAH patch from doom1, for starters)
* Modify the ADSR for patch for the intro of D_TENSE to make it audible
* Add vibrato to some patches like flute, make wind instruments actually sound like they should (this is not hard, FM is best at Reedy/brassy instruments)
* Make the square wave actually square-wavey, with double voice (it's close but still has too many even overtones)
* Make the Saw wave use pulse sine and double voice it (whatever it is now, is crap)

EDIT: Apparently Strife has a modified GENMIDI too. I haven't even looked at it. Can someone rip all these and put them in a PWAD so I can hear the differences? :v

[RyoAsuka]

Armor bonuses are called "spiritual armor" in the manual.