GZDoom discussion (Version 2.3.1 released 2016/jan/7)

[D2JK]

About dynamic lights: I have a monster that emits a small shadow at his feet, defined in GLDEFS. I've also attached a flickerlight to his shooting animation frames in DECORATE. However, the latter doesn't take effect until I disable the shadow in GLDEFS. So is there an intentional limit of one dynamic light per actor?

[NGX]

Any chance of seeing a TAS-demo recorder for GZDoom?

Extremely unlikely, and this has to be something that begins with ZDoom, not its forks. The reason being is that there is no point for such a feature until ZDoom standardizes things in such a way that demo playback with itself is backwards compatible... a process which I'd imagine would take a very long time...

That's a shame - between GZDOOM TAS-demos and a Playboy model I just might have opted for the former.

On a serious note but admittedly without technical knowledge into the ZDoom codes, I feel it's about darn time for some demo compatibility though, especially - although admittedly still clueless about the technical aspects; since the step up to [at least in GZDoom] to a "version 2.x" title.

[Graf Zahl]

There won't be any demo compatibility. That's a feature that would completely work against anything ZDoom stands for. You cannot implement it unless you carefully review every minute change, every bugfix, every feature addition for its effect on reproducability. And that's simply too much to deal with, because it prohibits any major refactoring.

Neither of ZDoom's developers has any interest in investing time here.

[NGX]

I believe there surely must come a time where drastic changes come to a halt and demo-compatibility becomes feasible.

But my main point was that I'd just really like to see a "tool assisted demo recorder" for GZDoom.

I went from Doom2.exe to Boom since that was like "the next official upgrade" but I always felt the gameplay i.e. the mouse-controls and hit-detections were terrible, but some 4-5 years ago GZDoom started to feel like a place to call home - with the popularity of playthroughs on Youtube I've felt a personal need for "TAS-demo software" to make as cool a playthrough as possible.

[Tapwave]

At this point, if you want a TAS recording port, you're better off basing on Chocolate doom. It's the closest thing you'll get to the original engine, and thus reproducing input throughout versions is more likely to be doable.

[Rachael]

NGX: I think what you really need to do, for now, is to run G/ZDoom within a virtual machine. The dev builds can run in Windows XP, which should be low enough in system requirements that you can tweak the virtual machine's settings (including, hopefully, the clock).

Other than that - if you find a program that can hook system timer calls, you're good - I've been trying to look for the system timer code, myself, but haven't had much success, and have had much more important issues to deal with (otherwise I would've already compiled a 15 tic/sec build for you, myself).

[NGX]

In this "hypothetical TAS demo-recorder" I was picturing a "save & load demo-recorder" rather than playing in slow-motion.

For my own personal use I'd like to synchronize the action with the music

[Rachael]

Yeah, no such thing is going to exist in GZDoom for a very long time, I'd imagine...

[kodi]

Does the current renderer still do the pitch-dependent FOV adjustment? The one that's been present since at least later versions of the old GL renderer that is.

[Rachael]

No, it actually rotates your view.

[kodi]

No, it actually rotates your view.

Sorry, I don't quite understand.

[Tapwave]

It takes your rendering point and rotates the view as if you were tilting your head to the side, or making your camera turn on its side.

[kodi]

Ah, thank you. And there's no way to toggle it off? It's messing with a script.

[Rachael]

What do you mean?

You need to rephrase this completely differently. You are being very vague and difficult to understand.

What script is this messing with? Why do you need "pitch-dependent FOV?" If you're talking about Y-shearing, that's available only in the software renderer and that will not mess with your scripts.

[Caligari87]

Not y-shearing... I think they're referring to something where looking flat has a 90-degree FOV, but looking up has a different FOV, like 80 or 100 degrees. For some reason I seem to remember this being a complaint (either against GZDB or GZDoom itself) some time ago, but I can't say for sure.