I wished for Better Graphics

[John Willerpore]

I intended to write about this way before, apparently laziness got in the way. However, I don't know much about technical matters so I won't be able to communicate my remarks in much detail.

But first, let me thank you for introducing the big logo and menu in GZDoom 4.50. It's a small touch up but goes a long way in making the pause and start screen look prettier.

Now, the two issues that I would like to point out are:

1. There's an unappealing effect in the way the textures/sprites are scaled. It's especially noticeable for me because I play exclusively 320x200 mode. I am a big fan of this pixel size and this aspect ratio. The effect in question is most visible when the doomguy loses or gains momentum. The textures then appear to "unwrap themselves" as if made of chunks of squares a few pixels each. This is visible on higher resolutions too. I wonder if it's possible to have cleaner way those pixels are rendered. Maybe there's some better shaders or solutions for displaying Doom in 320x200.

2. I clearly have a glitch in the graphics on all resolutions, maybe there's a fix to that. Namely, there is a horizontal strip of shifted pixels that appears when turning. This happens on all resolution settings. Is there a way to fix this? Is this a problem with GZDoom?

I'm often effectively turned off by Doom because I keep noticing those two things and find myself wishing that there's a new version of GZDoom coming with improved graphics. Please consider that there are people who appreciate Doom in beautifully pixelated form and as such it deserves to be attended to.

[Graf Zahl]

2 happens when you disable vertical sync. In that case the engine creates more frames than the display can show and you only see parts of each causing this tearing effect. The remedy is easy: Enable vertical sync in the video mode menu.

No idea what you mean with 1., though.

[Redneckerz]

2 happens when you disable vertical sync. In that case the engine creates more frames than the display can show and you only see parts of each causing this tearing effect. The remedy is easy: Enable vertical sync in the video mode menu.

No idea what you mean with 1., though.

Perhaps its the pixelated nature of the textures as apparent in software rendering? In stills its easily noticeable, when moving, due to the movement the pixellation appears.

GL renderers filter these things, so they look filtered in movement but also when standing still.

Just my hunch.

[Graf Zahl]

If it's that, no, cannot be fixed. Not even the best filters in the world can overcome the lack of pixels at such low resolutions

[Redneckerz]

If it's that, no, cannot be fixed. Not even the best filters in the world can overcome the lack of pixels at such low resolutions

And perhaps, on second thought, OP is also thinking of a lot of retro games that use big chunky pixels as part of their artstyle - as a deliberate choice.

For the rest, i dunno. GZ is the only Doom port that has physically based shaders i believe (if possible) and a full post-process pipeline, so its not like you can't create beautiful things with it (Total Chaos comes to mind, for one, Rise of Abyssal for two, Simon's Destiny for three)

And GZ has been the engine of choice for quite a few retro shooters in either development or just released.

[phantombeta]

To me, 1 sounds like it might be tearing too. So yeah, turn VSync on, then see if your issues are gone.

[Marisa Kirisame]

I'm pretty sure 1 is related to the fact psprite offsets are floating point and don't "clamp" to the screen's pixel size, so they appear to "distort" as the weapon sways. Though honestly this is only noticeable with filtering disabled. If you have trilinear filtering and use an upscaler like NormalNx you won't even notice it.