Texture filtering default discussion

[edward850]

If you're that concerned with how it was meant to look, why are you using the hardware renderer at all, rather than the software renderer that's still there and looks much closer to how it originally did?

That's kind of always been a point of confusion for me with these "how it was meant to be" discussions. Many "purists" will happily tell someone that their preferences are wrong, and not how Doom should be, but most of them also have a list of things that they use that are most definitely not how things were in 1993. Somehow, those things are OK and mine are not though.

It's a good thing nobody has argued that at all, then.

[Enjay]

I DO have fondness for the vintage method of fading the colors into darkness, and once in a while I think about my now largely irrelevant efforts to optimize the base palette, but I also miss some of the socks I used to have. I prefer being able to use 3d sectors.

It certainly had character, that's for sure. Even "back in the day" it would bother me how some things (pinkies in particular IIRC) used to change colour depending on how bright they were lit.

[Enjay]

It's a good thing nobody has argued that at all, then.

Ummm... I mean, constant arguments like that are the main reason that I barely bother with Doomworld these days.

I mean, literally what I said. People saying that my choices (and the choices of others) were flat out wrong, but then they would come up with a list of reasons why their deviation from how things actually were in 1993 were OK.

[edward850]

Is this really a conversation about the default texture filtering anymore? Seems this isn't staying focused.

[SanyaWaffles]

Agreed, I think this has kind of derailed considerably.

[Enjay]

Is this really a conversation about the default texture filtering anymore? Seems this isn't staying focused.

No, the discussion pretty much moved on some time back after Bauul and others answered what the original question was.
It was never intended to be about the pros and cons of texture filtering in itself anyway. The query was really "why are people so invested in what the default should be". So, things just kind of moved on to more-or-less related things once that was over.

Originally, I was just mystified as to why a default setting had become such a rallying point for some people. I knew that the merits of the setting would likely come up to explain it, but it was the phenomenon of pretty much every UZDoom discussion having an "at least texture filtering will be off by default" comment almost immediately that really struck me as "something is going on here". It is obviously such an important thing for a lot of people - a real "hill to die on" - and it just seemed bizarre that feelings ran so high on something that I considered so trivial, because it's easy to change - especially as I routinely check and change the settings to my preferences for pretty much any game I install.

I didn't want (and tried to avoid) an "X is best" discussion. They've been done to death, go nowhere and just get tempers flaring - and no one is right IMO because it's all personal taste.

[Enjay]

Agreed, I think this has kind of derailed considerably.

I don't know about derailed. A question was asked, it was answered and the conversation moved on to other related topics.

[bimshwel]

I don't mind the filtering being on by default if that is ultimately a more forward-looking feature, but since it is so controversial it ought to be easy to disable, and also easy to IDENTIFY. I only figured out what it was because I mess with everything I don't remember seeing before, but I think of how many people have those ugly frame interpolation settings activated on their televisions simply because they don't know how to turn that off, but might very well do so if they knew they could and saw the difference it made. Maybe filtering (with an explanation in parentheses) options could be included with iwad selection the first time you run the program.

purple was the WORST color range for 256 color fading, and of course i wanted (and still want) to put it everywhere, but i mentally was able to accept anything that at least looked nice at full brightness. Funny how I can tolerate that but not rarely-seen menu text being fuzzy.

[Enjay]

Yeah, there are a lot of people who just accept defaults. I think, actually, is probably even less active than accepting them. A lot just don't care. They switch something on and it works, so that's good enough. The thought of going in and tweaking it doesn't even occur to them. I'm sure we've all had conversations with people where we notice they have something on a setting that isn't optimal (and I don't just mean a matter of taste) and if we ask about it the answer is something like "that's just how it was when I got it". They've never been anywhere near the settings menu of whatever it is.

[bimshwel]

That might be another reason my brother prefers Doom 64. You put the cartridge in the slot, press a button to turn it on and it is there.

[Enjay]

That's always been an attraction of consoles versus the "it's too technical" mindset of some people when considering gaming on a computer, and it was probably even more so in the relatively early days of PC gaming versus the early consoles. That and price, of course.

[bimshwel]

i probably still have the muscle memory for running zennode and loading pwads on a command line but am sure glad I don't need to use it. I don't even consciously remember HOW to load a wad but my fingers seemed to believe it involved -play but then switched to -file . dir.exe /p/w has just come up also. or maybe it was dir *.exe/p/w but now that i am thinking about it that no longer counts.

[Enjay]

Oh yes, I remember that: working on a mod where you needed to go in to Doom to check something after editing it, then come out go back into whatever editor was relevant to what you were doing (and, in itself, may have been mostly command line driven), make some changes, quit, go back into doom, quit, go back into the editor, quit, go back into doom...

I often used to write batch files to automate as much of the command line "work" as possible.

[bimshwel]

I made batch files to display dumb text graphics but do not think i ever used it for node building. That would make too much sense.

[simc]

A silly fact. Back in year 2000 PrBoom 2.1.2's opengl version GlBoom had linear filtering on by default. And it was the default until PrBoom-plus 2.5.1.5um (2016). For PrBoom-plus 2.4.8.1 (2006) it's software renderer got an option to have rounded pixels for textures and sprites. This was removed in Prboom-plus 2.6um (2021).
Pics, imgur: https://imgur.com/a/hvLzXOa

So that was a period of 10-15 years when there was no huge public awareness against texture filtering in Doom. And PrBooom was the synonym for playing all Doom versions.

The issue people have with the texture filtering is quite explicitly that it's not how the art was designed, and so it's complete nonsense as a default presentation for the game.

The original Doom had a 320x200 resolution. Yet all DSDA Doom, Woof, D+D2, Crispy start with higher resolutions by default. They also fix original Doom's texture rendering errors. So the argument to respect the default originals is a bit selective.

This is an arrogant view, but I'm not sure if people are worried how the port plays for them or whether you and all the others will see the (original) game in the way they want you to see it. Modders can ask for the latter one but if you play in a room with too much sunshine or someone else watching tv their artistic perfection is trashed in so many ways. And unfortunately for many this whole detail is only a catchy way to ridicule others.