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Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 4:57 pm
by Ed the Bat
I make it no secret that I favor (G)ZDoom over Zandronum, hands-down. I can't even count how many times I've looked at a project, saw it was Zandronum-only, and just walked away. Aside from the obvious issue of being some four-odd years behind, in terms of features/updates/bug fixes, Zandronum is literally painful for me to look at. Something about it hurts my eyes. Compared to GZDoom, everything looks... the best way I can think to describe it is 'smoky'. It's like I'm in a room where someone lit and then put out a small fire.

It's like this on a fresh install, 'out of the box'. I've never had this problem in GZDoom. Is there some setting I can/should be checking in order to fix this, or is this just yet another unavoidable problem with Zandronum?

And please note, everything I've said hereis in reference to the GL renderer. However, GL is my only option, since the software renderer gives me rather serious motion sickness, due to its terribly limited palette and vertical shearing.

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 5:07 pm
by Sergeant_Mark_IV
Go to OpenGL options and mess with the texture filters and lightning options.
If you are felling any kind of headache or pain in the eyes, maybe your resolution on Zandronum has a refresh rate inferior to 65hz.

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:23 am
by Matt
The rendering in Zand and GZ look identical to me.

Have you tried copypasting the ini from one to the other to see if you can get one to look like the other?

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:33 am
by Ed the Bat
Sergeant_Mark_IV wrote:Go to OpenGL options and mess with the texture filters and lightning options.
I tried boosting the gamma, and it helped a bit. Less strain on my eyes, but still a little bit... fuzzy, somehow. Like there was a subtle motion blur, I don't know... Some things still looked a little different, too, like the lightness of wall texture colors, and a few scaling differences (errors, maybe? I know Zandronum uses an older version of the GL renderer), particularly noticable on the HUD.
Vaecrius wrote:Have you tried copypasting the ini from one to the other to see if you can get one to look like the other?
Just tried that, and it seems to have improved things even more. They look closer to GZDoom; not as fuzzy anymore. Still got the aforementioned scaling issues (minor, but still worth mentioning), as well as some major problems like the message scaling issue. I picked up a clip and thought I was being smacked in the face!
Spoiler:
So now it looks like I'm gonna have to poke around in these .ini's and figure out what made such a drastic change. As far as I was aware, the menu options were already the same, but obviously there's something different. Something that seems to be default for a fresh install of GZDoom, but not Zandronum.

Thanks for the tips, guys.

EDIT: ...I think I found the source of my headaches.
Zandronum (apparently) sets Brightness to 0.15 by default. Not gamma, not contrast. Brightness. This is 0 by default in (G)ZDoom. I set it back up to 0.15 to check, and boy was it painful to look at. Turned it back to 0, and everything is good in the world. I'm frankly amazed something that seems so negligible on the surface made such a difference for me... :shrug:

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 6:37 am
by twinkieman93
Hehe, that picture looks like someone took a big red stamp and just stamped the hell out of your face.

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 11:04 am
by wildweasel
Yeah, Zan carries over Skulltag's weird-ass message scaling settings - you'll have to go into (I think) Display Options, Messages, Scaling Options to adjust a slider, because for some reason it defaults to assuming you have a screen size of 32x32...

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:40 pm
by TerminusEst13
wildweasel wrote:Yeah, Zan carries over Skulltag's weird-ass message scaling settings - you'll have to go into (I think) Display Options, Messages, Scaling Options to adjust a slider, because for some reason it defaults to assuming you have a screen size of 32x32...
Oddly, I've always preferred Zan's message settings to ZDoom's. ZDoom seems to only have the option of scale text in hi res, which isn't as precise, while Zan lets me set the height and width.

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 12:08 am
by Matt
[gigantic "picked up a clip" message to the face]
I should find a way to do this in an April 1 release of Hideous Destructor, just for the reaction.

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 12:11 am
by Ed the Bat
...I just now noticed, a full day later, that with the way the words are line-broken in my screen shot, it turns into instructions to get me something.

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 10:30 am
by TerminusEst13
Ed will be very happy to get his ammo.

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:32 pm
by NeuralStunner
TerminusEst13 wrote:Ed will be very happy to get his ammo.
A VERY HAPPY AMMO ADDED

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:23 pm
by Gothic
Ed the Bat wrote:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 4:30 pm
by Project Shadowcat
... wow...

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 5:08 pm
by Ed the Bat
I'm getting a '2001: A Space Odyssey' vibe from that thing.

My god... it's full of bullets!

Re: Zandronum, why so hard to see?!

Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 6:39 pm
by Project Shadowcat
Ed the Bat wrote:I'm getting a '2001: A Space Odyssey' vibe from that thing.

My god... it's full of bullets!
AKA a small 10 round clip for that Tempest's 1400mm Artillery cannons.

That's not a typo.