Vanilla Essence 4.3: 320x200p support! More bugfixes.

[m8f]

Vanilla Essence 4.1b.pk3 loads without errors. Will give it a thorough testing later.

[Pixel Eater]

Aw brilliant! Thanks so much

This one may be even better too. It uses the 'transient cvar' command all throughout now and finally fixes the rocket reverb problem NightFright brought up ages ago.

[Pixel Eater]

v4.2 is up.

It's got 160p now for the GBA enthusiast. Also when you pick PSX mode for 'view stretching' it will scale the sprites back down accurately (to the PSX, they remain ~1.03x wider than DOS). And of course M8f's bugfixes are in

Some quick setup tips:
For GBA style visuals generally pick the NeXT option or PC if that's not labelled.
The same goes for Doom95 emulation but obviously it could reach higher resolutions (up to 480).
Doom 1 on the GBA was limited to the low detail setting but Doom 2 had high detail on everything except for flats, so I'd go with that.
The closest letterboxing available for GBA mode is 16:10 which is slightly wider than it's physical 15:10 aspect.

[m8f]

---

1. Compatflags are written over the caption in Behavior menu:

My screen resolution is set to 960x540.
Probably a little more space will help.

2. Rocket trails option Sprite/Particles are reversed.
Compare Vanilla Essence's:

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OptionValue "VE_TrailType"
{
   0, "Vanilla (Off)"
   1, "Sprites"
   2, "Particles"
   3, "Sprites and Particles"
}

with GZDoom menudef's:

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OptionValue RocketTrailTypes
{
   0.0, "$OPTVAL_OFF"
   1.0, "$OPTVAL_PARTICLES"
   2.0, "$OPTVAL_SPRITES"
   3.0, "$OPTVAL_SPRITESPARTICLES"
}

3. Enhanced Night Vision option in Effects menu displays "Unknown" and cannot be changed.
It probably should point to "ve_a_altnightvision" instead of "ve_a_enhanced_nightvision".

4. Should "Missile decals" in Effects menu also affect player's rockets and plasma?

[m8f]

Sorry for the double post, but this is important. With transient cvars, you have to read them after loading a saved game too. Currently Vanilla Essence causes a VM abort on game loading.

---

Code: Select all • Expand view

  override  void WorldTick()
  {
   ...
    if (isJustLoadedGame()) { [read cvars] }
    ...
  }

  private
  bool isJustLoadedGame()
  {
    bool result = !_isNotLoadedGame;
    _isNotLoadedGame = true;
    return result;
  }

  private transient bool _isNotLoadedGame;


[Pixel Eater]

Sorry for the double post, but this is important.

No worries and thank you. I've spent hours trying so many different things to fix it, only for things to go from bad to worse that I'm just going to return to the less efficient method. While it would be nice to have I just can't get it to behave

Here's what's working for me:

Vanilla Essence 4.2b.pk3

And thanks for pointing out those minor bugs too. #2 & 3 I would have never found. #4 I tried to verify but with all decal options on I still don't get rocket decals (even in unmodded GZDoom).

[m8f]

This way it works:

---

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class VanEssHandler : EventHandler
{
    private ui transient cvar lowres, detail, resolution, quantize_h, quantize_w, par, lowres_psp, smooth ;

    private ui void get_cvars(PlayerInfo plr)
    {
      lowres      = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_lowres", plr );
      detail      = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_detail", plr );
      resolution   = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_resolution", plr );
      quantize_h   = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_quantize_h", plr );
      quantize_w   = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_quantize_w", plr );
      par         = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_par", plr );
      lowres_psp   = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_lowres_psp", plr );
      smooth      = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_smooth", plr );
    }

    private ui bool should_get_cvars()
    {
        return (lowres == null);
    }

   override void UiTick()
   {
      PlayerInfo plr = players[ consoleplayer ];
      if( plr )
      {
         if ( should_get_cvars() ) { get_cvars( plr ); }

         if( lowres.GetBool() )
         {
         ...
 

But honestly, the performance gain is not as significant as I expected, so there is no big need in this, after all.

#4: that's strange, if you get other decals, but not rocket.

Edit: Apparently, Cvar performance does matter in SpriteScaler, since it applies to every thing on the map. Here is the working solution:

---

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class SpriteScaler : Inventory
{
   PlayerInfo plr ;
   bool toggled ;
    private transient Cvar stretchCvar;
...

   override void DoEffect()
   {
      if( owner )
      {
         super.doeffect() ;
            if (stretchCvar == null) { stretchCvar = Cvar.GetCVar( "ve_par_stretch", plr ); }
...

[drfrag]

Hey this is great and it even runs with LZDoom. 4.1 just hung with GZD 4.1.1 on my laptop but now it works.

[JPL]

Great mod! I got this zscript VM abort after dying and respawning on a map:

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VM execution aborted: tried to read from address zero. In function parameter "self"
Called from SpriteScaler.DoEffect at Vanilla Essence 4.2.pk3:zscript.zc, line 195
Called from CVar.GetInt [Native]


Looking at the code, "par_stretch" is declared transient and so might be NULL when loading a game. I was able to work around the VM abort by changing line 195 to

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if( par_stretch && par_stretch.GetInt() == 2 )

, though I'm not sure if that has any unintended side effects.

[Pixel Eater]

Hey this is great and it even runs with LZDoom. 4.1 just hung with GZD 4.1.1 on my laptop but now it works.

Cheers DrFrag, that's great to know

I got this zscript VM abort after dying and respawning on a map:

Yeah sorry about that, looks like M8f had a fix for that days ago but I've been unavailable till now. A fixed version should be in the OP now.

though I'm not sure if that has any unintended side effects.

It only would have meant that sprites would have been stretched by the PSX 'view stretch' option when an actual PSX console mostly compensated for that.

[mrtaterz]

Vanilla Essence integration into GZDoom when? Because it's looking like it could be a really good way to get the "true experience" and having this straight up interfaced into the system by default would be amazing. You could also rename the mod from Vanilla Essence to something more fitting, and branch out the mod into a "User Comfort" mod, more-so than just a "Vanillafication" mod. You already have N64 options. Why not add in high-definition computer melter presets as well and just make the mod more about quick and convenient options?
Customizing the user experience through Presets would simplify tailoring the game to the way the player would want. Sometimes I'm feeling HD Doom, so I'll load up Doom with Sprinkles and turn on the texture filtering and 16x anisotropic filtering, sprite clipping, etc; other times, I'll be playing Ashes with Vanilla settings and Troo Cullers, but then decide maybe that's not what I want? It would be as easy as a press of a button to go from Vanilla-styled Ashes 2063 to HD Ashes 2063 with Mouselook.

Lastly, I don't know if the code is clean enough for integration into GZDoom yet (because you're still updating this mod as it is), but this is still just something to consider! I thought all of these ideas together would be a great way to streamline the user experience and simplify things.

[Pixel Eater]

Ha ha well, I think if the same feature were to be worked into GZDoom it would probably be done with a different approach. The backend of Vanilla Essence is sorta bulky and difficult to maintain. In fact I plan to complicate it further so that it behaves more politely with the default menus while it's active.

It's for those reasons I won't be adding any extra custom preset slots, but the idea is to have an HD configuration from the start before toggling Vanilla Essence anyway. What I am contemplating is how best to add templates in order to quickly switch between console emulations

[Rachael]

Echoing that, I think it's best for a mod to remain a mod.

The moment it gets rounded up and put into the engine, the creator loses control - and whether you might believe it or not, it's the creator's passion into a project like this that gives it its magic.

Don't be so eager to have GZDoom take it in. You can advertise it to all your friends, if you want, but having an independent work is the best way for it to work - trust me.

[mgtroyas]

Just discovered this thanks to the Spotlight review. It's impressive having that instant vanilla look, ever after having spent hours fiddling with all those options, so I suppose for new users it's ever more useful.

I suggest enabling "Banded SW Lightmode" option and disabling "lens distortion effect".

[Pixel Eater]

I suggest enabling "Banded SW Lightmode"

Usually I disable that because the Palette Tonemap setting does it also and they don't overlap so good. But I've been finding that for games that have nicer colourmaps (like Heretic/Hexen) the Banded Lightmode is preferable to using the palette setting