DOOM Retro v5.4 (updated May 2, 2024)

[bradharding]

bzzrak said:

...

Anyway, in DR, the exploding candle becomes a dying and screaming space marine.

Thanks for this. I've narrowed it down to how DR spawns blood when shooting shootable things. I should have a fix for the next version...

[bradharding]

DOOM Retro v2.3 is now available. It includes a great number of improvements, and a few new features, such as motion blur, the player's path in the automap, and more player stats. Visit doomretro.com to download and for the full release notes. A big thanks to Dugan Chen for his work on the Linux support for this build.

[Urthar]

Just had a quick play. Something odd seems to be happening with full-bright sprites. I noticed sprites with a rotation aren't lit up when viewed from certain angles, such as 3.

(Edit: I was worried it might just be happening due to a dehacked project I'm working on, so I checked using DM2PAL which only replaces sprites and doesn't touch any dehacked stuff.)



(Edit: Tested it with just DOOM2.wad just incase it was something to do with sprite replacements. The glitch is most noticeable with Lost Souls.)

[kaleb.]

I really love this port, but I STILL wish there was some sort of FOV settings so I could play with the nice Widescreen HUD with out getting motion sickness

[bradharding]

Urthar said:

Just had a quick play. Something odd seems to be happening with full-bright sprites. I noticed sprites with a rotation aren't lit up when viewed from certain angles, such as 3.
...

Thanks for this. I made a change several builds ago where if a monster is facing away from the player, they won't be fullbright when they fire, but it looks like that's not working as intended. I'll look into fixing it, or perhaps scrap the idea altogether.

KalebNoobMaster said:

I really love this port, but I STILL wish there was some sort of FOV settings so I could play with the nice Widescreen HUD with out getting motion sickness

I've been recently considering allowing the field of view to be adjusted.

[Urthar]

Now, I've had a better look at it, the motion blur effect is pretty awesome.

[BigDickBzzrak]

The player's death sound seems to be wrong. It should be screaming, but instead the grunting sound is played.

EDIT: I've just found another one: try loading DOOM1.wad and typing "spawn cyberdemon" in the console...

Spoiler

crashes

[VGA]

This must be the only game I have ever played where I like the motion blur :D

[bradharding]

bzzrak said:

The player's death sound seems to be wrong. It should be screaming, but instead the grunting sound is played.

EDIT: I've just found another one: try loading DOOM1.wad and typing "spawn cyberdemon" in the console...

Thanks for these. Consider them fixed for the next release.

VGA said:

This must be the only game I have ever played where I like the motion blur :D

Yeah, it's worked out quite well. I wasn't expecting to keep it in when I first implemented it, but I like having it enabled. It was pretty easy to code too.

[BigDickBzzrak]

You won't believe me, but I found another bug...
Load Doom's E1M1. Get to the finish room.
Inside, there are armour bonuses next to the exit switch.
Pick up one of them and WHILE THE SCREEN IS STILL YELLOW, press the switch. On the intermission screen, press Escape twice...

Spoiler

the screen will become yellow again

[bradharding]

Thanks again bzzrak! Fixed here.

[BigDickBzzrak]

I should really get a life sometimes, heh.

Anyway, two cosmetic "bugs" with HacX.
(screenshots inside spoilers)

Spoiler

The weapon numbers on the status bar go beyond that "Arms" field.
That girl enemy, as well as that huge cyborg with rockets have green blood.

Also, one more remark: when you load Chex Quest 2 with the launcher, DR doesn't automatically set the IWAD to Chex Quest, as it probably should.

Spoiler

[bradharding]

Thanks again bzzrak. I've fixed the HacX issues, with the Chex Quest 2 one to come soon.

[Blastfrog]

I'm not really sure about the motion blur effect as it's implemented in Doom Retro. Take a look at Strife: Veteran Edition's motion blur. I realize that it's a hardware renderer, but it could be a useful reference.

[bradharding]

Blastfrog said:

I'm not really sure about the motion blur effect as it's implemented in Doom Retro. Take a look at Strife: Veteran Edition's motion blur. I realize that it's a hardware renderer, but it could be a useful reference.

Yeah, that's why it's off by default. DR's motion blur isn't _proper_ motion blur, but it seems to have been received quite well. It's just a hack that draws each frame at a reduced opacity while the player turns quickly. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure that Strife's method is something that could be achieved in software, at least not efficiently.

[BigDickBzzrak]

BTW, about the motion blur. I noticed that it kinda doesn't refresh the image, like a HOM, when you're in a HUGE area and turning around, like that arena with hitscanners in TNT Evilution MAP08. IDK if that's a bug, but it certainly doesn't look very pretty.

[VGA]

Brad what are your thoughts on truecolor rendering like in QZDoom?

[CapnClever]

I couldn't find anything to suggest this was intentionally included so I thought I'd ask here: is the archvile's attack supposed to vertically boost you less than normal? It surprised me when I was inflamed but barely budged an inch upwards. I can't name any off the top of my head, but I'm aware that there are maps that depend on the vile boost for secrets. Possibly there may be gimmick-type maps that depend upon the duration of the jump for completion together.

[bradharding]

VGA said:

Brad what are your thoughts on truecolor rendering like in QZDoom?

It's not something I'd really want to implement in DR. IMHO, the two most significant things that keeps Doom Retro "retro" are the lower resolution and the 256 color palette.

CapnClever said:

I couldn't find anything to suggest this was intentionally included so I thought I'd ask here: is the archvile's attack supposed to vertically boost you less than normal? It surprised me when I was inflamed but barely budged an inch upwards. I can't name any off the top of my head, but I'm aware that there are maps that depend on the vile boost for secrets. Possibly there may be gimmick-type maps that depend upon the duration of the jump for completion together.

Thanks for this. At some point, along with other mobjs, I increased the mass of the player so corpses would slide around less when reacting to rocket and barrel explosions. Now A_VileAttack() thinks Doomguy has put on some weight. I'll look at fixing this for the next build.

[VGA]

Brad how can I see the skill level that is "active"? For example, running DR, loading a save. Suppose I don't remember if it is HMP or UV, what do I do?

The skilllevel cvar is uber-useless. It just tells you the difficulty level last selected in the menu(?)

[bradharding]

The skilllevel cvar exists so the last selected skill level can be retained between games (similarly with the episode, expansion and savegame cvars), but yes, they are pretty useless to the user. (I'm considering hiding them in the console). What I could do is show the current skill level in the output of the playerstats ccmd.

[BigDickBzzrak]

One little feature request: can you make the monster count be shown by the mapstats CCMD?

[BigDickBzzrak]

Found some bugs for ya. One of them is rather serious.

1. "unbind ." will work and unbind the command bound to the . key, but "unbind ," will just print out the syntax for the unbind CCMD.

2. This one is a problem with non-English keyboards, like the one I have.
On a US keyboard, the symbols on the right side of the keyboard are [ ] ; ' \
On a Serbian keyboard (the one I'm using), these symbols become š đ č ć ž, respectively.
Now, when in the Doom Retro console, when you type a non-English symbol, nothing is printed at all. So, for example, I can't type a colon (:) if I'm using the Serbian keyboard layout, as it corresponds to the letter Š and doesn't get printed.

Sorry if my description is a bit hard to understand. I barely understand it myself.

3. Now the serious one.
Try running DR with a nonsensical IWAD name specified, like "doomretro.exe -iwad DOOM2.WDA". DR will not start, but instead print out a message saying that the IWAD wasn't found. It's how it should behave, right? Yeah, but try running DR once more with a correct IWAD name.

You will lose all of your settings.
Not good, isn't it?

[bradharding]

bzzrak said:

Found some bugs for ya. One of them is rather serious.

...

Thanks for these! (EDIT: 1 and 3 fixed, 2 will need some time...)

BTW, looks like I forgot to respond to your previous post: monster count is now displayed in the mapstats ccmd, as of v2.3.7.

[Urthar]

I can't be certain, becuase I'm not running a framarate counter, but the lastest version (2.3.9) seems to be running faster and feels smoother. I imagine there's quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes at the moment.

[bradharding]

Urthar said:

I can't be certain, becuase I'm not running a framarate counter, but the lastest version (2.3.9) seems to be running faster and feels smoother. I imagine there's quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes at the moment.

Just a bit! Each release sees at least one new optimization, however minor. Earlier today I've done an almost complete rewrite of how shadows are handled, which brings a significant improvement in performance.

[Sayok6]

bzzrak said:

Chex Quest 2

Chex Quest 3 (The one made by the Digital Cafe) is the definitive fix of Chex Quest, makes fixes to maps, new episode, etc, etc.

[VGA]

Sayok6 said:

Chex Quest 3 (The one made by the Digital Cafe) is the definitive fix of Chex Quest, makes fixes to maps, new episode, etc, etc.

OK but for that you have to use ZDoom instead of your favourite port. Also there are some mods for the older Chex Quest games that don't work with 3.

[Danfun64]

True, but most of them require ZDoom anyways...

[Cipher]

Can I just confirm that there's no way to turn off the autoloading of your last save upon death? I've been looking for a good vanilla-esque source port, and this was just about my favorite; ran more smoothly for me than even Crispy Doom, had a few nice extra features, etc., but like ZDoom, that's a deal-breaker for me. I'd like the ability to decide to take a punishment on try a level from a pistol start on a whim, rather than having to warp back to the map.

Edit -- Wish I could delete this post now. Somehow I managed to miss that option on my first two trips through the ccmd list.