My GZDoom configuration file

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Panzermann11
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My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

I'm sorry if this isn't a good place to post this, just tell me to suggest where else should I post.
I just felt like sharing my personal configuration file for GZDoom, mainly serving a starter configuration file. I've made it around 2019-2020, but I've decided I should do much more of this file than just leave it on my hard drive. Some of the changes are inspired by original versions of Doom, Raven's games and Strife.

So, what are the notable changes?

First off, the controls.
The controls for every supported IWAD for GZDoom are pre-configured to modern standards.
WASD obviously to move, Left Control and Space Bar crouches and jumps, E to use. For inventories mainly used by Raven's games and Strife, left and right arrow key navigates the inventory, and Alt activates them. Secondary fire, reload and zooming keys for mods are also bound aswell, with the right mouse button, R key and clicking the mouse wheel respectively. The mousewheel scrolling for weapons has been swapped, up for next weapon and down for previous. Mouse looking is also enabled.

Secondly, the graphics.
I've taken cues and inspiration from the original DOS versions of Doom, Raven Software's games and Strife while still using a mixture of GZDoom's graphical features, such as transparent effects like explosions and fireballs.

The texture filter mode is now none, and the filter for dynamic light shadowmaps is set to nearest.

Rocket trails and blood impact effects are now sprites instead of particles.

All of the message types such as pickups, death notifications, chat and centered messages uses the default color. The color tint on the menu screen has now been removed, since the original games didn't have it.

The screen wipe transitions are now IWAD-dependent, based on the original versions. Doom has the melting, Heretic has none, while Strife (and also The Adventures of Square, based on my preference) has crossfading.

For the software renderer, the sky is now linear and stretches with the resolution. Mipmapping and linear filters are disabled.

Sprite billboarding is set to X/Y axis, with the look pitch reduced in an attempt to prevent the "lying on the ground" appearance.

Other graphical differences include sprite shadows for actors, radial fog, sector light mode set to vanilla, smooth fake constrast, square particles, smarter sprite clipping, spectre transparency set to "Shadow", and opaque lost souls.

Last but not least, other changes.
By default, the IWADs uses their respective traditional color sets for the auto-maps, except for The Adventures of Square. If set to custom, colors similar to the original versions will be used while still keeping the unique features such as colored door for keys, indicators for teleporters. Depending on the IWAD used, the indicators' colors will be different to differentiate from other map aspects with the same colors, particuarly locked doors. Secret areas are marked as orange in Doom, red in Raven's games and a lighter red for Strife. Teleporters to the same map are marked as green in Doom, magneta in Heretic, purple in Hexen and yellow in Strife. Teleporters to a different map is marked as magneta in Doom, orange in Raven's games and yellow in Strife.

The main difference for Doom is that the one-sided walls are colored crimson so they don't blend in with the doors requiring red keys, while Hexen and Heretic is based on GZDoom's default coloring. Strife use colors similar to the original version aswell. If IDDT is used, enemies are marked in red, friendlies are marked in green, and non-counting enemies are marked in gray.

The color of the crosshair will change depending on your health. Higher health means your crosshair will look green, with half of your health being yellow and lower being orange, eventually turning red if your health reaches a critical point, usually 25 or lower. The crosshair will eventually turn blue with health over 100 from items like health bonuses and soul spheres.

Strife's chat macros have been changed to use proper lines from the original version.

The player's gender is set to female by default in Harmony and Rise of the Wool Ball, since the protagonists in these IWADs are female.

Other differences include ENDOOM screens, A.K.A. the messages when you quit Doom, keys now show up using IDDT, disabled stats for Hexen's, Strife's and Action Doom 2's automaps and enabled subtitles for Strife, The Adventures of Square along with hints and Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl along with the tutorial.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NJrhrJ ... sp=sharing
Last edited by Panzermann11 on Tue Mar 05, 2024 5:19 am, edited 52 times in total.
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Enjay
 
 
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Enjay »

Finder153 wrote:WASD obviously to move
Not obvious to me. Arrow keys for teh win... or something.
(Because I'm left-handed and use my mouse in my left so WASD is inconvenient.)

It sounds like you like a very different config to me. I like to keep most of the bells and whistles that you have turned off. For me, when I set things up, the important changes are a very small number of keys and mouse buttons, invert the mouse Y axis and I'm pretty much good to go. :biggrin:
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Graf Zahl »

Enjay wrote: It sounds like you like a very different config to me. I like to keep most of the bells and whistles that you have turned off. For me, when I set things up, the important changes are a very small number of keys and mouse buttons,:

Same with me. I tend to use the keypad keybinds with some minor modifications and leave most of the other defaults alone.
I find WASD utterly inconsiderate to left handed people - totally unusable. :P
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

Enjay wrote:
Finder153 wrote:WASD obviously to move
Not obvious to me. Arrow keys for teh win... or something.
(Because I'm left-handed and use my mouse in my left so WASD is inconvenient.)

It sounds like you like a very different config to me. I like to keep most of the bells and whistles that you have turned off. For me, when I set things up, the important changes are a very small number of keys and mouse buttons, invert the mouse Y axis and I'm pretty much good to go. :biggrin:
Graf Zahl wrote: Same with me. I tend to use the keypad keybinds with some minor modifications and leave most of the other defaults alone.
I find WASD utterly inconsiderate to left handed people - totally unusable. :P
Thing is, default controls in first-person shooters typically weren't designed for lefties in mind, at least not until Half-Life. Older 90's first-person shooters, particularly those for DOS made use of a different default control setting. Usually, you would use arrow keys to move, Space Bar to use, Control to shoot. Inventories in Hexen and Strife uses square brackets to navigate, and Enter to use.

I'm a right-hand man, so I pretty much stuck with WASD and the like.
Last edited by Panzermann11 on Wed Sep 21, 2022 7:10 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by XoR »

Tried the config and my impressions:
1. Dark graphics - compared to SW renderer.
Just switch between True Color SW Rendered and Hardware Acceleration - completely different lighting. And if it was better I would not complain but it is not. To make it closer you would need to set sector lighting to software and set fake contrast to smooch. It looks much better with these settings.

BTW. Most old 3d games suffer from the same issue - move to 3d acceleration screwed up their lighting. Especially visible in GLQuake which was rushed unfinished attempt imho. Thankfully there are better ports and ways to play this game.

2. Sprites are too high - due to HW rendering used.
This is issue with HW rendering in GZDoom - sprites are not added to scene as post processing but are part of scenery so they cannot be in the same place or they go through the floor. So the easy fix is to put them higher. Not a fan of this solution and other than lighting its why I do not use HW rendering myself.

3. Sprites are not sprites - gl_billboard_mode 0 instead of 1
This is probably something people argue about. I myself rather have sprites face me at all the times because them being affected by perspective is much more immersion-breaking than facing at all times.

This is of course issue with freelook in Doom. That game was not designed for it and I myself do not play with freelook. Thus I need to use auto aim which your config I see have disabled.

4. No multi-sampling
There is zero reason not to use multi-sampling or other AA like super sampling. FXAA is also good way to apply AA and also works for true color software renderer.
Depending on monitor and GPU you could also draw game at 200% scale. For 1080p monitor it would get you 4K rendering. In this case you can also add FXAA even if you normally do not like it for blurring image too much because in this case blurring won't be visible.
In either case your config has all AA options disabled.

Control-wise I prefer having use button as second mouse button. Typically in games I use E and jump is on second mouse button and alt-fire at space. Depends on game though. For Call of Duty type of games I use space for jumping and second mouse button for aiming, some times. Other than that its much better to use mouse wheel to specific weapons eg. I have scroll down for shotgun and scroll up for machine gun and other weapons for other mouse buttons - which I have a lot in Logitech G502. That way you are always having weapon of your choice one button away.

Last thing to note: In config I see you use default sound font. Not sure if its because its something you post on internets and people might not have. If not then make yourself this pleasure and get SF-55.sf2. It sounds hella lot better and fits Doom music beautifully.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

XoR wrote:Tried the config and my impressions:
1. Dark graphics - compared to SW renderer.
Just switch between True Color SW Rendered and Hardware Acceleration - completely different lighting. And if it was better I would not complain but it is not. To make it closer you would need to set sector lighting to software and set fake contrast to smooch. It looks much better with these settings.

BTW. Most old 3d games suffer from the same issue - move to 3d acceleration screwed up their lighting. Especially visible in GLQuake which was rushed unfinished attempt imho. Thankfully there are better ports and ways to play this game.

2. Sprites are too high - due to HW rendering used.
This is issue with HW rendering in GZDoom - sprites are not added to scene as post processing but are part of scenery so they cannot be in the same place or they go through the floor. So the easy fix is to put them higher. Not a fan of this solution and other than lighting its why I do not use HW rendering myself.

3. Sprites are not sprites - gl_billboard_mode 0 instead of 1
This is probably something people argue about. I myself rather have sprites face me at all the times because them being affected by perspective is much more immersion-breaking than facing at all times.

This is of course issue with freelook in Doom. That game was not designed for it and I myself do not play with freelook. Thus I need to use auto aim which your config I see have disabled.

4. No multi-sampling
There is zero reason not to use multi-sampling or other AA like super sampling. FXAA is also good way to apply AA and also works for true color software renderer.
Depending on monitor and GPU you could also draw game at 200% scale. For 1080p monitor it would get you 4K rendering. In this case you can also add FXAA even if you normally do not like it for blurring image too much because in this case blurring won't be visible.
In either case your config has all AA options disabled.

Control-wise I prefer having use button as second mouse button. Typically in games I use E and jump is on second mouse button and alt-fire at space. Depends on game though. For Call of Duty type of games I use space for jumping and second mouse button for aiming, some times. Other than that its much better to use mouse wheel to specific weapons eg. I have scroll down for shotgun and scroll up for machine gun and other weapons for other mouse buttons - which I have a lot in Logitech G502. That way you are always having weapon of your choice one button away.

Last thing to note: In config I see you use default sound font. Not sure if its because its something you post on internets and people might not have. If not then make yourself this pleasure and get SF-55.sf2. It sounds hella lot better and fits Doom music beautifully.
1. That's because I set the lighting mode to Doom, I thought that was the closest to how lighting looked in the original Doom. Now that you've said it, I'm considering changing it to vanilla, which is like software but with the radial player lighting. Also, fake constrast is now changed to smooth, just like you requested.

2. I now set the sprite clipping to smarter, which should make the sprites look less like they're floating a bit in the air.

3. Yeah, about that, I get why it's controversial...


4. I intentionally left them off for optimization for lower-end computers, and to keep the sharp, pixel look of the game.

5. Yes, I use SF-55.sf2 aswell, I intentionally set it to the default soundfont for the configuration file. It's supposed to be a configuration file for starters after all.
Last edited by Panzermann11 on Sun Jan 08, 2023 3:13 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

NEW UPDATE:
  • Auto-aiming and auto-saves have been re-enabled completely.
  • Restored stats for all IWADs except Hexen, Strife and Action Doom.
  • Keys now show up with the IDDT cheat.
  • Subtitles for Strife, The Adventures of Square and Action Doom 2 are now enabled.
  • Enabled bloom effect.
I originally wanted to lean towards a more classic feel for my configuration, but I figured some little quality of life is needed.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

NEW UPDATE:
  • Added 2 versions of the configuration file: a classic-style aiming version with crosshair disabled and auto-aim enabled, and a modern-style aiming version which is the other way around.
  • Updated the configuration files for Action Doom 2: Reloaded.
  • Removed the game_support.pk3 in the autoload, since GZDoom loads the PK3 itself.
  • Restored the cursor to GZDoom's default.
  • Added a back button, located in the upper left corner.
Last edited by Panzermann11 on Tue Sep 13, 2022 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

NEW UPDATE:
  • Added sprite shadows for actors.
  • Changed shadowmap filter for dynamic lights to high-quality PCF.
  • Changed the sky render mode to stretch.
  • Restored rocket trails for torpedos in Hacx.
  • Restored weapon light strength to 8.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

MINOR UPDATE:
  • Changed the map color sets to traditional except for The Adventures of Square, since I found out the custom teleporter colors can be used to cheat through the GoldenEye Egyptian Temple-esque floor puzzle in TNT: Evilution's final level.
  • Set the UI scale to 2, status bar and fullscreen HUD adapts to screen size, messages, consoles and alternative HUD use default scale.
Last edited by Panzermann11 on Sun Oct 09, 2022 10:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

NEW UPDATE:
  • Disabled FXAA and anisotropic filtering, set texture filtering to none and set light shadowmaps to nearest to optimize for lower-end computers. Considering the graphics for Doom-engine games, these changes are barely noticable anyways.
  • For Raven's custom map color set, unseen sectors are now black to match the traditional color set.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

NEW UPDATE:
  • Set audio resampling to nearest for more clearer audio.
  • Night vision now shows stealth monsters and spectres.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

NEW UPDATE:
  • Set the UI scaling to 3 for better visibility on 16:10 monitors.
  • Disabled the bloom effect.
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Re: My GZDoom configuration file

Post by Panzermann11 »

NEW UPDATE: Reverted UI scaling to the default value. Only the status bar now scales to fullscreen.
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