Using ZDoom to emulate classic Doom Engine experience?

[Nezumi]

What settings should I use if I want to experience the titles as close to how they were released as possible? Some of them are obvious (Doom compatibility mode -- not "strict", since that replicates bugs and technical limitations that generally aren't a good idea to bring back unless you're running a PWAD that depends on them -- mouse off, crouch and jump off, Appropriate Traditional map colors), but there's some that I'm not sure about, or that I know but can't find an option to shut off (gunshot/blood spatter decals, though it's a fairly minor issue). I tried checking the Wiki, but it didn't really help -- it elaborated on what some of the features I was confused on do, but not which settings are best for a "purist" experience. The new capabilities ZDoom adds are great, but sometimes you just want to play Doom/Heretic/Strife/Whatever like it was back in the day without having to use DosBOX and a bunch of extraneous game-specific files.

[ChronoSeth]

To be honest, you're better off not using ZDoom if you want this.

To actually answer one of your questions, you can disable decals entirely by entering "cl_maxdecals 0" in the console.

[Nezumi]

Is there another source port that would be better, or should I just pop them open in DosBOX? Either way, I admit that the settings I mentioned above (or I could turn mouse on, but not mouselook, but who actually used a mouse to play these games?) do provide a fairly close experience.

[BouncyTEM]

Chocolate Doom is your friend for oldschool action. Its whole purpose is to bring doom to a more modern OS and no other changes.

[Nezumi]

Nice! It doesn't yet support all the IWads I'd want to play, but it looks very promising. Thank you for your help... and I still have ZDoom for other stuff.

[shoober]

I have been trying to get the same experience out of Doom that you are trying to do (but with mouselook on+autoaim disabled). I came to the conclusion that if you want it to be as close to the original as possible, you want Chocoloate Doom. I tried it and I wasn't pleased with the graphics, and there was no mouselook option. I'm so used to how ZDoom enhances the graphics and upscales the textures and sprites, that I couldn't stand how terrible things looked from a distance in Chocolate Doom. Chocolate Doom looks like how it does under DOSBox Things that are farther away from you look like a pixelated mess in Chocolate Doom. ZDoom really makes Doom shine graphics wise. Everythings sharp and clean.

So a good man by the name of Gez told me about this engine called Eternity. It has exactly what I'm looking for, upscaled graphics but the game behaves just as it would under DOSBox if you enable all the compatibility options. I highly recommend Eternity over Chocolate Doom. I'm pretty sure Chocolate Doom also doesn't fix the bugs that you should want fixed, like the save game bug if you're playing Ultra-Violence+Fast Monsters. If you're playing a lot of custom WAD's on Chocolate Doom, you will probably run into a lot of visplane overflows, moiré errors, and medusa effects if you use Chocolate Doom.

If I were you, I would go with Eternity. Its accurate and fixes the bugs that should be fixed. You just have to turn on all the compatibility options, and disable all the enemy options besides "Monster Infighting", and you will be Dooming like its 1995 (if you want it to mimic v1.9 that is). Another great thing about Eternity is it makes Doom look just as good as ZDoom does. Chocolate Doom looks like poop (even at 2048x1546). If Chocolate Doom had an option to upscale the graphics and enable mouselook, I would use it for sure.

[leileilol]

320x200 is "poop" now? Kids these days... Chocolate Doom is meant to be like that, and it's meant to have those bugs also. It intends to be a faithful recreation of the original doom executable complete with its original errors and limits. It's not supposed to "upscale" the graphics or enhance anything. Every other Doom port already does that.

Nice! It doesn't yet support all the IWads I'd want to play, but it looks very promising. Thank you for your help... and I still have ZDoom for other stuff.

There are chocolate-raven and chocolate-strife branches.

[Nash]

> insists on classic experience
> complains about pixelated graphics

[BouncyTEM]

In other words. "Let them eat cake.", doom edition.

[shoober]

320x200 is "poop" now? Kids these days... Chocolate Doom is meant to be like that, and it's meant to have those bugs also. It intends to be a faithful recreation of the original doom executable complete with its original errors and limits. It's not supposed to "upscale" the graphics or enhance anything. Every other Doom port already does that.

> insists on classic experience
> complains about pixelated graphics

Upscaling the sprites and textures does not deter from having a classic doom experience. If you really want to, you can set EE or even ZDoom go run doom at 320x200 to have it look just like vanilla or chocolate doom. Everything far away looks like poop because of the very low resolution. But with EE and ZDoom, you can run it at like 2048x1536 where everything at a distance is super clear. It still looks kind of blocky and pixelated because I play in software mode. At the time when John Carmack wrote the original Doom engine, if he had the option of adding a resolution option back then to let us change between resolutions, he would of done it. I think running Doom at above its native resolution will only enhance the Doom experience, not take away from the classic Doom experience. Having monsters behave differently then they would normally does though, and playing it with OpenGL or texture filtering. So if running Doom at 320x200 is your thing, I feel bad for you.

The lowest I go is 640x480 when playing Counter-Strike 1.6 so I can have 160Hz refresh rate on my CRT. 320x200 looks really bad with "3D" games. I say 3D in quotes because many would argue that Doom isn't a truly 3D game, and they're right. But it still is emphasising depth and distance, so things from afar look like poop. So playing it at a higher resolution would still be true to the game. It would just make it better. That's like saying, "If you don't play Super Mario World at its original resolution (256x224), you won't have a classic Mario experience". I would have to disagree sir. Upscaling would only enhance the experience.

[leileilol]

At the time when John Carmack wrote the original Doom engine, if he had the option of adding a resolution option back then to let us change between resolutions, he would of done it.

No, he wouldn't. At the time, CPUs sucked (fastest = Pentium 66MHz), the ISA bus was terribly slow, VLB options were rare, PCI video hasn't caught on, and the VESA standard was nowhere near as widespread. He couldn't even implement a 15bpp mode (which would suck anyway, since 15bpp lacks the darker colors, losing colormap precision).

If 320x200 is poop, then i'd hate to see what you'd think of playing Doom at a lower viewsize with half the horizontal resolution, like most people did in 1994, including myself. You would probably "REEEEEEEEER!"

[shoober]

No, he wouldn't. At the time, CPUs sucked (fastest = Pentium 66MHz), the ISA bus was terribly slow, VLB options were rare, PCI video hasn't caught on, and the VESA standard was nowhere near as widespread. He couldn't even implement a 15bpp mode (which would suck anyway, since 15bpp lacks the darker colors, losing colormap precision).

Yes he would. What I was saying was, if people had the computer power back then to do it, then he would of added it as an option if computers back then could handle it.

If 320x200 is poop, then i'd hate to see what you'd think of playing Doom at a lower viewsize with half the horizontal resolution, like most people did in 1994, including myself. You would probably "REEEEEEEEER!"

If it was 1994, I wouldn't. But now a days I would, since you have the option to do upscaling. You would be a fool to still play at 320x200 resolution today.

[Graf Zahl]

No, he wouldn't.

Of course he would have. No sane developer would be satisfied with running a game at the lowest available resolution. Just because at the time something better was not available doesn't mean it was intentionally limited.

And yes, 320x200 is poop. It was poop back in 1993 and 1994 and the fact that it was the best possible thing back then doesn't change anything about this being insufficient for 3D graphics.

[Blue Shadow]

And yes, 320x200 is poop. It was poop back in 1993 and 1994 and the fact that it was the best possible thing back then doesn't change anything about this being insufficient for 3D graphics.

Agreed. I mean, one of the two things that made go wow when I first discovered ZDoom a few year ago, was the higher resolution it offers. It's just nice to be able to see things clearly!