ZDoom

Except those poor souls with GL 2.x hardware which can't do this stuff due to their poor shader support...

IMO this should be treated basically like crouching and jumping. Have a default position which is "use whatever is defined in MAPINFO (or GLDEFS, or wherever else modders could change them)", but can also set them to non-default settings; in which case any mod-side setting are ignored. This way, everybody should be happy, we eat our cake and still have it too.

Totally agree. I think it would be awesome if I could define recommended settings (graphics options, hud, compatflags, etc) in GameInfo, then have a popup of some kind "This mod suggests the following settings. Apply for this session? Y/N". Also perhaps a prompt when exiting the options menu, "save changed settings for just this mod, or to main profile?"

Attached: shot of Half-Life 2 Lost Coast's bloom-related settings menu.

I think that is how it and other similar graphical settings should be done. Creators specify the bloom settings they believe are ideal, and the user can either turn it off entirely via a simple menu option, or change variables manually in the console with the understanding that it is unsupported.

You have to draw a line against "the user is always right" somewhere when it comes to intended visuals; obviously gamma and detail levels and shutting certain features off entirely is important, but past a point you are providing many knobs to twiddle, that many users won't even fully undertand, that will make some mods look like crap. Always provide that stuff via the console, but make it clear that it's overriding an intended value, whether it's system default or specified by a mod.

Modders need some assurance that the new features will be usable, or they're not worth supporting for any given mod. If no configuration ability is provided, readmes will be full of "best played with settings X Y and Z" which hardly anyone will bother with.
Think of this as paying off the work done on those new features.

So what I specifically propose is this:
1. Provide a way for modders to specify bloom tuning and other appropriate settings in an existing or new type of text lump, eg GLDEFS.
2. Keep the existing off/on menu settings for the various features as an easy way for non-power users to opt out, as in the HL2 settings menu.
3. Expose all the fiddly tuning numbers via console, as an aid to both modders and power users.

I guess if they play something that looks bad with it, users will have to turn it off.

Major Cooke wrote:Can we see an option menu for bloom controls? All of it?

That would be the best thing to do.

Can we see an option menu for bloom controls? All of it?

The thing is, some people like bloom, others don't. Some like a mild hint, others like to see it in full force, some only want it in dark levels, others want it everywhere.
This just has to be a user setting, it makes very little sense to give mappers control over it.

This sounds very reasonable but it raises a range of questions about what kind of control WAD authors should have over graphical settings. If one WAD (which happens to be a standalone IWAD) looks way better with certain bloom settings, why shouldn't any WAD be able to specify their own bloom settings in data? And from there, what other settings should be considered part of the WAD's visual intent? Custom PLAYPAL lumps have long been a way to depart from the stock look, and lots of the recently added GLSL framebuffer features seem like they belong in a similar category.

On the other hand, it's nice for a program to always respect the user's preferences, eg if they say they want bilinear vs unfiltered textures.

As someone with a large project in progress I must say I wish I could include a text lump that specifies "optimal" graphical settings, ie the way that I'd like it to look, and let users depart from that or ignore it entirely if they like. The current solution for this seems to be including a custom INI file and a batch file for launching with that, but this is Windows-only and doesn't respect user settings you'd absolutely want to keep, like resolution and keybinds, right?

I don't have a great solution for this at hand, and apologies if this has been discussed to death before; just noticing that GZDoom's awesome new graphical features have added some wrinkles. Happy to break this into a separate thread if needed.

Good point with the art styles. Although there will still be some mods where manual intervention is necessary, you are absolutely right that for a cartoonish game like Square different settings are needed.

So, the new bloom effects, tonemap mode & so on is pretty awesome, and I'm enjoying using them.
That said, there is one minor problem - different game artstyles can constitute whether Bloom is turned on, which tonemap is used, etc. For example, when playing Doom, I like having my bloom on, but if I am going to start playing the Adventures of Square, the art style and bloom don't mix, in my opinion. For this, I have to remember to switch my bloom settings every time I switch IWad - could these settings be made IWad-specific, to avoid issues like this?