ZDoom on 486s

Discuss anything ZDoom-related that doesn't fall into one of the other categories.
User avatar
Kinsie
Posts: 7399
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2004 9:22 am
Graphics Processor: nVidia with Vulkan support
Location: MAP33
Contact:

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by Kinsie »

leileilol wrote:I just find it odd to see various Quake ports run better than Doom ports on the same machine .....
To be fair various Quake ports have pretty shite sound engines soooo
User avatar
Graf Zahl
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
Posts: 49056
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 10:19 am
Location: Germany

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by Graf Zahl »

Which is not surprising considering how bad the offered libraries are that can be used in a GPL program.

Quake doesn't interest me that much anymore but for my private use I built a Q2 version with ZDoom's old FMOD 3 based sound system. On my current system that's certainly better than the original but for very obvious reasons that can't be released.
leileilol wrote:I dumped Doom around 1996, but you don't see me whining DOOM IS DEAD ITS THE PAST GO PLAY QUAKE ! into everyone's faces either.

That's comparing apples and oranges. Doom and Quake are completely different games but a 486 doesn't have anything you can't get on a better system.
I just find it odd to see various Quake ports run better than Doom ports on the same machine .....
This shows 2 things:

Does any of these ports use an advanced modern sound system or just some primitive homebrew mixer like Doom originally did (and most SDL based ports still do?) I can tell you outright that none of these will come even close to ZDoom's sound capabilities.
User avatar
leileilol
Posts: 4449
Joined: Sun May 30, 2004 10:16 am
Preferred Pronouns: She/Her
Location: GNU/Hell

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by leileilol »

Graf Zahl wrote:Does any of these ports use an advanced modern sound system or just some primitive homebrew mixer like Doom originally did (and most SDL based ports still do?) I can tell you outright that none of these will come even close to ZDoom's sound capabilities.
TomazQuake at one point, used FMOD, but was removed later due to obvious license reasons.

Zdoom's sound capabilities? What are those exactly? I know Zdoom can play looped and unlooped sound effects, just like Quake. Sound format loaders are irrelevant to capabilities. 'Reverb' is irrelevant also.

Whatever Quake does, it's certainly more efficient than FMOD (and can actually use WaveOut properly, which seems broken currently.)
User avatar
Graf Zahl
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
Posts: 49056
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 10:19 am
Location: Germany

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by Graf Zahl »

leileilol wrote: Zdoom's sound capabilities? What are those exactly? I know Zdoom can play looped and unlooped sound effects, just like Quake. Sound format loaders are irrelevant to capabilities. 'Reverb' is irrelevant also.
Reverb is a feature. ZDoom also uses 3D sound and some other advanced features. In other words: ZDoom has a modern sound system that has been designed for modern hardware not something from the 15 year old garbage heap. And with all software that is used on hardware that's below the specs: It gets slow.
Whatever Quake does, it's certainly more efficient than FMOD (and can actually use WaveOut properly, which seems broken currently.)

Whatever Quake does is certainly much more primitive than FMOD. I'm assuming that Quake is just the same simple and very limited software mixing algorithm that can be found in many Doom ports. Such a mixer has very little overhead but also very little in terms of features. 10-15 years it may have been state of the art but today's systems can do much more.
User avatar
Rachael
Posts: 13531
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 1:31 pm
Preferred Pronouns: She/Her
Contact:

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by Rachael »

@lei: I think the gist of what Graf is trying to say is you're running ZDoom below system required specs. It's like when you buy a video game and it tells you "System Requirements:" on the box, only with ZDoom they've never officially been tested or decided upon.

@Graf: I also think that in a way, lei is right to a certain point. ZDoom is based on an old game, it should run on older systems, maybe not as old as a 386 like it was designed for (and it probably never will run on one very well, anyway), but all the new features of FMOD kinda creates a little bloat. Although, to be honest, I like them, and I see no reason to do without them, and I perfectly support FMOD, I am just seeing the opposing view of this as something that might be taken into consideration. Gotta remember, she's in China, most of the big advanced shit they have over there is the half-tested stuff they're sending overseas for us to use. :P
User avatar
leileilol
Posts: 4449
Joined: Sun May 30, 2004 10:16 am
Preferred Pronouns: She/Her
Location: GNU/Hell

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by leileilol »

Graf Zahl wrote:15 year old garbage heap
you're not allowed to say this in a thread about 486s ever (especially since this is the fastest 486 possible on socket 3, performance roughly equivelant to pentium 90 (yes even more than 75)), you could apply that to anything slow like the OLPC XO.

FMOD 'features' are just non-essential to a basic Doom experience. Depending on FMOD for any sound at all for a minimum is really stupid
it's not like it's the only option in the world for sound. Did Quake also use OpenAL or SDL_mixer? No
Why not have a similar mixer to those ? OH WAIT IT'S QUAKE ITS NOT ADVANCED LIKE FMOD IN ZDOOM DURR THAT DOESNT EXIST
Zdoom's slowness is clearly from the processing in FMOD, so to make zdoom faster on older platforms (not only the 486, the Pentium is affected too), there should be at least a non-fmod dependent solution that provides stereo audio without reverb (not like anyone uses more than that on a older system anyway especially for a not-so-modern game such as Doom)

Why am I using Zdoom then? Well
- no 35hz cap (yes you can achieve higher than that without sound on a 486, and much more with the UNFORTUNATELY IGNORANTLY REMOVED r_detail cvar)
- network play between "MODERN!" computers, so no one whines about switching to dosbox or booting to win9x
- to play my decorate wad
- to play Strife
User avatar
HotWax
Posts: 10002
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2003 6:18 pm
Location: Idaho Falls, ID

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by HotWax »

@Soul & lei:

You're both starting to sound a little bit like purists there. ZDoom is a source port being developed for modern computers and utilizes advanced features. If those advanced features impact the experience on older hardware, that's too bad; either use a different port or get better hardware. What is the alternative? Forego adding valuable features to cater to a minority? If you want the nice features, you're going to have to accept the higher requirements. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
User avatar
leileilol
Posts: 4449
Joined: Sun May 30, 2004 10:16 am
Preferred Pronouns: She/Her
Location: GNU/Hell

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by leileilol »

HotWax wrote:@Soul & lei:

You're both starting to sound a little bit like purists there. ZDoom is a source port being developed for modern computers and utilizes advanced features. If those advanced features impact the experience on older hardware, that's too bad; either use a different port or get better hardware. What is the alternative? Forego adding valuable features to cater to a minority? If you want the nice features, you're going to have to accept the higher requirements. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
the point is, zdoom can run on 486s, though it could be better improved. Since this thread's creation, all i've seen in progress is added cripple.
User avatar
Rachael
Posts: 13531
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 1:31 pm
Preferred Pronouns: She/Her
Contact:

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by Rachael »

HotWax wrote:@Soul & lei:

You're both starting to sound a little bit like purists there. ZDoom is a source port being developed for modern computers and utilizes advanced features. If those advanced features impact the experience on older hardware, that's too bad; either use a different port or get better hardware. What is the alternative? Forego adding valuable features to cater to a minority? If you want the nice features, you're going to have to accept the higher requirements. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
My point was more along the lines of "just take it into consideration." I myself have a modern computer that runs ZDoom at 150 FPS at 1680x1050. I don't have any plans on running it on an older computer. If I did, I'd stick with vanilla Doom.
User avatar
Graf Zahl
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
Lead GZDoom+Raze Developer
Posts: 49056
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 10:19 am
Location: Germany

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by Graf Zahl »

leileilol wrote: FMOD 'features' are just non-essential to a basic Doom experience. Depending on FMOD for any sound at all for a minimum is really stupid
ZDoom uses FMOD because it's easy to use with an overall good quality. Too bad that it's too much for your poor old 486 but honestly, I don't care. That system is below the specs so you have to live with performance hits. BTW, it's not FMOD by itself that's causing the problems but the fact that it runs in 3D-software mode the entire time which obviously is somewhat time consuming.

I'll tell you a little secret:
I've been investigating sound libraries for the last week to create a GPL compatible alternative but so far I've ended up running into wall after wall - because *NOT ONE SINGLE* sound library is flexible enough to do what I need. The ones that support multiple sound formats are pure shit, the ones that have some actual features require a sound conversion library to work at all - and none has a proper callback system to manipulate the sound processing on the application level.

FMOD is the only one that implements multithreaded streaming, full customization of 3D sound properties and loading support for all important file types.

Of the others the best one I have seen so far is OpenAL but that one suffers from the most [censored word] API imaginable, no decent way to implement streaming and total lack of playback control aside from polling the sound status as often as possible and then change some values.
NiGHTMARE
Posts: 3463
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 8:39 am

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by NiGHTMARE »

leileilol wrote:Why am I using Zdoom then? Well
- no 35hz cap (yes you can achieve higher than that without sound on a 486, and much more with the UNFORTUNATELY IGNORANTLY REMOVED r_detail cvar)
- network play between "MODERN!" computers, so no one whines about switching to dosbox or booting to win9x
- to play my decorate wad
- to play Strife
Have you considered giving Odamex a try? That uses SDL rather than FMOD, and it has modern network play features so it would take care of that problem at least. Obviously it doesn't support DECORATE and can't play Strife, but you can still use ZDoom for those. As for the FPS cap, I've no idea if it's been removed, but if not you can always make a feature request.
User avatar
Enjay
 
 
Posts: 26517
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2003 4:58 pm
Location: Scotland
Contact:

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by Enjay »

leileilol wrote:the point is, zdoom can run on 486s, though it could be better improved.
But that point is pretty irrelevant because it's not the target spec and no-one is really trying to use Zdoom on a 486 other than by way of an experiment.

Surely the fact that it can run on a 486 is as much luck as anything else, given that a 486 isn't the target spec? The fact that it can be improved is a moot point IMO because that's not what it was meant to run on. Zdoom might be running 15 year old data, but it isn't a 15 year old program. The two things are quite distinct in my mind. Zdoom does a whole boat load of things that doom.exe does not and is intended to run on a newer machine than a 486 and under newer operating systems than a 486 was built to run.

And, even if it does run on a 486, what does it run? I'm guessing small, simple levels that could be run on most ports, even the ports designed with lower specs in mind than Zdoom is and which do not try to introduce some of the more modern features that Zdoom does. It's never going to be a all-round Zdoom-level playing machine. Instead, it's going to be a novelty value "look Zdoom runs on this" machine.

And further, realistically, who is going to be running it on a 486 anyway? I can't imagine that many of Zdoom's audience run a 486, again making it a moot point. In fact, there are probably quite a few who weren't even born when 486s became old news. ;)

If Randy or Graf were fired up by this issue and wanted to see if they could get Zdoom to run on the lowest spec possible, then that would be a different matter (their satisfaction would be value enough) but it doesn't seem particularly likely that they want to invest time in doing that.

Finding out how well a Zdoom runs on a 486 is an interesting exercise, and worth doing as an experiment. However, personally, I see little real value in it other than that of novelty. IMO, I can't see much worth in the devs spending time and effort shoehorning Zdoom into something that it isn't meant to fit into and which no-one is going to use in any practical sense anyway.

And surely that should be the bottom line: What is the value in making Zdoom run well on a 486? Who would it benefit? What would not be getting done whilst the devs were doing it? Is getting it to run on a 486 more important than those things? Is the effort worth the outcome?

Perhaps if Graf shifts things around and is able to get GZdoom running with an alternative to fmod (and perhaps Zdoom would be able to do the same), then trying things on a 486 again would be interesting (no more than that though). However, I personally don't think the motivation for doing anything with Zdoom should be to try and get it to run on ancient hardware that, it was never aimed at and which, realistically, no-one is using in any practical sense for playing Zdoom anyway.
User avatar
DoomRater
Posts: 8265
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2004 8:21 am
Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
Location: WATR HQ
Contact:

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by DoomRater »

NiGHTMARE wrote:Have you considered giving Odamex a try?
Look who you quoted. If i'm not mistaken, leileilol was the biggest pusher for Odamex I've seen around these parts.
NiGHTMARE
Posts: 3463
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2003 8:39 am

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by NiGHTMARE »

I can only find half a dozen quotes from leilol on these forums re: Odamex, and none of them are really "pushing" the port. Even if she is a fan of that port, that doesn't automatically mean she's gotten around to trying it on the 486 rig.
User avatar
randi
Site Admin
Posts: 7746
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2003 10:30 pm
Contact:

Re: ZDoom on 486s

Post by randi »

Personally, I stopped caring about ZDoom performance on 486s around 2001. However, if it can still run on those machines at a rate that could be considered decent, I think that's pretty cool. But at the same time, I'm not going to go out of my way to acquire a 486 system so I can try and squeeze more performance out of it.
Graf Zahl wrote:10-15 years it [Quake's mixer] may have been state of the art
It wasn't so much state of the art as it was a necessity for leaving enough CPU time to make the game playable on the systems of the day. Duke 3D's sound system is more advanced and older; Quake's is rather mediocre in comparison.
Post Reply

Return to “General”