Making a doom box - what specs should I have?

[invictius]

I'm pretty sure that an intel q6600 and 8gb of ram would be enough for everything including project brutality on slaughterfest map, but I'm not sure about the video card. Would a low-end $30 current model be able to keep up? I would also have a 60gb SSD for game installs and idgames, and all the wads on mp servers/all the mods and addons on a hard drive.

[Maes]

If you plan on using only software rendering, the videocard is pretty much irrelevant (as long as it doesn't suck even at 2D graphics and/or is shared memory).

[invictius]

Maes said:

If you plan on using only software rendering, the videocard is pretty much irrelevant (as long as it doesn't suck even at 2D graphics and/or is shared memory).

What features can gzdoom do that zdoom can't? I'm only aware of high-res textures and 3d models.

[VGamingJunkie]

Well, there's also dynamic lighting and reflections (ZDoom can sort of do wall reflections but only in that dummy sector way that Duke 3D used). Also, due to GZDoom essentially converting the planes and walls into polygons, there's not a distortion when looking up and down that you'll find with ZDoom and, of course, the distant lighting is smoother, not just gradient lines. So mostly aesthetics.

[invictius]

MetroidJunkie said:

Well, there's also dynamic lighting and reflections (ZDoom can sort of do wall reflections but only in that dummy sector way that Duke 3D used). Also, due to GZDoom essentially converting the planes and walls into polygons, there's not a distortion when looking up and down that you'll find with ZDoom and, of course, the distant lighting is smoother, not just gradient lines. So mostly aesthetics.

I was told that it also solves monsters looking like cardboard cutouts when you look up and down but that doesn't seem to be so. Maybe the guy was getting confused with what you just said.

[scifista42]

invictius said:

What features can gzdoom do that zdoom can't?

http://zdoom.org/wiki/GZDoom#Features

invictius said:

I'm only aware of high-res textures

ZDoom supports high-res textures.

invictius said:

I was told that it also solves monsters looking like cardboard cutouts when you look up and down but that doesn't seem to be so.

This is actually a problem that GZDoom introduces (ZDoom doesn't have it). See Billboarding and Free look.

[Aquanet]

I'd be interested to hear more about where the hardware bottleneck happens with highly detailed maps like in Sunder. CPU suck? My only understanding is to use prboom instead of zdoom when things get chuggy.