Yet another retro source port?

[Hellser]

PrBoom+ is also often used to share demos of people playing maps to give the mapper a view of someone playing the map for the first time. Which is much more valuable than someone giving a review.

While I love to have such things for GZDoom, trying to make sure everyone is using the same version of GZDoom is near impossible:

• User A: LZDoom
  User B: GZDoom 3.2.5
  User C: GZDoom 4.2.4
  Mapper: GZDoom Devbuilds

Guess what? No one can share demos. Making for these first time plays of maps or recordings of bugs in maps being impossible to share unless everyone is sure that they are on the latest version of GZDoom.

[Blzut3]

Who are these "Doomworld fanatics"? What's all this talk about Doomworld hating GZDoom or whatever? The worst consistent criticism I hear is that new ZDoom mappers tend to fall to feature creep in their maps, but that's about it.

While I would agree that I haven't seen much hostility towards GZDoom in mod threads, I do know exactly what Graf is talking about when it comes to attempts to standardize anything. Basically suggesting that other ports should adopt ZDoom's solution to a problem is always returned with a deliberate attempt to design something incompatible. Even if said feature came from Hexen originally. Although I don't keep track of who said what I know there's definitely been times where phrases like "ZDoom shouldn't get to have all the fun" get thrown around instead of making technical arguments on why the proposed solution (i.e. the one already implemented by at least one port and used in many mods) doesn't fit.

[Graf Zahl]

PrBoom+ is also often used to share demos of people playing maps to give the mapper a view of someone playing the map for the first time. Which is much more valuable than someone giving a review.

While I love to have such things for GZDoom, trying to make sure everyone is using the same version of GZDoom is near impossible:

• User A: LZDoom
  User B: GZDoom 3.2.5
  User C: GZDoom 4.2.4
  Mapper: GZDoom Devbuilds

Guess what? No one can share demos. Making for these first time plays of maps or recordings of bugs in maps being impossible to share unless everyone is sure that they are on the latest version of GZDoom.

That entire argument boils down to pure laziness. There's an archive where all builds can be downloaded so just giving the build version and establishing a simple rule of "no devbuilds for demos" would solve this if some people weren't stubbornly attached to some random old version and couldn't be swayed to either upgrade or install multiple versions in parallel.

But TBH, even if we looked for demo compatibility in the future, I wouldn't believe it'd change anything. Now the argument will shift to "But what about those who don't use GZDoom?" and things will remain the same.

The nonsensicality here is also exemplified by Eternity being a no-show. If what you said was the driving force, Eternity would be in a far better shape - because it provides all those people supposedly need.

No, the real reason here is that at some point in time the demo players agreed on PrBoom being the standard for demos that strictly needs to be adhered to - which brings us back to the laziness issue - this strange obsession with insisting on using the one-and-only port of choice and nothing else.

While I would agree that I haven't seen much hostility towards GZDoom in mod threads, I do know exactly what Graf is talking about when it comes to attempts to standardize anything. Basically suggesting that other ports should adopt ZDoom's solution to a problem is always returned with a deliberate attempt to design something incompatible. Even if said feature came from Hexen originally. Although I don't keep track of who said what I know there's definitely been times where phrases like "ZDoom shouldn't get to have all the fun" get thrown around instead of making technical arguments on why the proposed solution (i.e. the one already implemented by at least one port and used in many mods) doesn't fit.

The thing is a bit more complex.
Vavoom and its offspring k8vavoom never were afraid to borrow features and implement them in a compatible fashion.
EDGE is is a strange situation here, if they wanted to do this, they'd have to sacrifice their own history so it doesn't really count. I was actually considering DDF back in 2004 when I invented advanced DECORATE, but at this point EDGE has become so incompatible with mainstream Doom that it was not an option.

Most others have been inactive for too long, leaving only one port as the guilty party, and that's Eternity. Not only are they overprotective of their own features, highlighted in every single case (G)ZDoom tried to add an Eterntity-originated feature, they also never really cared about any form of cross compatibility. That history goes back more than 15 years. While all other ports agreed of not allocating each others' linedef and sector specials, Eternity just never cared and made itself incompatible with everything else advanced in existence, its specials overlap not only with ZDoom's but also Legacy, EDGE - even old versions of itself - and whatever else was ever relevant - and the same attitude filtered down to every new feature in the engine. NIH was the prime driving factor.
And look where it got them.

[3saster]

While I love to have such things for GZDoom, trying to make sure everyone is using the same version of GZDoom is near impossible:

• User A: LZDoom
  User B: GZDoom 3.2.5
  User C: GZDoom 4.2.4
  Mapper: GZDoom Devbuilds

Guess what? No one can share demos. Making for these first time plays of maps or recordings of bugs in maps being impossible to share unless everyone is sure that they are on the latest version of GZDoom.

As Graf already pointed out, this shows exactly the weird mentality over at Doomworld. Ideally, 99% of people using GZDoom for playing should be using the latest official version; the devbuilds are not needed, since the updates are frequent enough (this isn't ZDoom), and old builds shouldn't be used, but are because "All GZDoom versions after X.X.X suck". LZDoom is a legitimate one, but there are very little people using it, and the usual playtesters wouldn't be using it. Even so, all these cases are negated by the fact that getting a specific version of GZDoom isn't hard at all; in that respect, GZDoom is extremely well organized. It all ties into the mentality that PrBoom+ is the one true port, and other ports are an afterthought. While PrBoom+ is certainly a much better port for demo-recording (especially for speedrunning), that does not mean that GZDoom is automatically banned from being used for demos, especially for playtesting. Which is ridiculous, especially when you consider that stuff like Sunder was (initially) designed for non-infinite height! Though I suppose that provides a perfect argument for why playtesting is necessary in the first place...

To see some of this BS in action, there was a thread back on DW (can't find it at the moment), where someone posted that conveyors belts are slightly faster in ZDoom ports than vanilla. Cue people like NIH coming and saying how this is a "perfect example" of how GZDoom is a terrible port that should never be taken seriously, and lots of other people trying to come up with janky set-ups that make conveyor belts take the same time in both ZDoom and vanilla ports. Keep in mind that this is a very slight difference; iirc, a one-minute conveyor in vanilla is about half a second faster in ZDoom. If your map critically depends on this very slight speed difference, well, I'm sorry to say, but your map is badly designed, that isn't ZDoom's fault. Almost every complaint about ZDoom changes on DW are of this form: a tiny difference that only breaks in extreme edge cases that are usually bad design and/or a meme (i.e. ZDoom's code to make certain stuck monsters unstuck breaking Slaughterfest 3 MAP33).

[Graf Zahl]

Since you mention the conveyors, there's also a compatibility option to get closer to Boom's behavior, and this is good enough to handle the most volatile conveyor setup I've ever seen - that's in the first map of Caverns of Darkness which is so delicate that it's quickly broken by an incompatible implementation.

[drfrag]

Speaking of the "new" retro source port:
viewtopic.php?f=231&t=61070&p=1125103#p1060688

Truly the way it's NOT meant to be played, i've even added a slow ISA VGA simulation option (Trident 9000i).

[SanyaWaffles]

For me, my projects are designed with Freelook and finite height in mind. Porting it to PRBoom would just be a nightmare.

As I said before, accessibility.

For me I've never seen the reason to stick with an old version of GZDoom.

Truly the way it's NOT meant to be played, i've even added a slow ISA VGA simulation option (Trident 9000i).

Now we're talking! That's the true authentic 386 experience right there. Now all you need is for it to catch fire.

[drfrag]

Actually it's close to a slow 486 and those CPUs didn't require even a heatsink. On a 386 Doom ran like shit.

[SanyaWaffles]

Can we have a 386 emulator mode in RUDE drfrag? I want to run Doom slower than a snail with leprosy.

[Cacodemon345]

Can we have a 386 emulator mode in RUDE drfrag? I want to run Doom slower than a snail with leprosy.

Lol.

Speaking of Doomworld, I am actually surprised by the amount of people wanting to map in Boom format, whilst using nearly none of the extra advanced mapping features that Boom introduced. One of those features is the deep water effect that was actually a feature arrived with Boom, and I have barely seen any Boom-compatible mapsets use it; I can only remember Community Chest 4 actually using it, and Disjunction, another Boom-compatible mapset, still uses the old vanilla "deep water" hack in a map if I remember correctly.

And then there's the hate for jump and freelook in Doomworld. I still remember that Anotak thread where he posted a forcibly jump disabling & crouch-disabling mod that quickly descended into a flamewar over two sides arguing for and against the force-disabling version of the mod, and the flamewar only came to a stop once a middle ground was finally found and embraced.

[TheMightyHeracross]

Speaking of Doomworld, I am actually surprised by the amount of people wanting to map in Boom format, whilst using nearly none of the extra advanced mapping features that Boom introduced. One of those features is the deep water effect that was actually a feature arrived with Boom, and I have barely seen any Boom-compatible mapsets use it; I can only remember Community Chest 4 actually using it, and Disjunction, another Boom-compatible mapset, still uses the old vanilla "deep water" hack in a map if I remember correctly.

Still using the vanilla hack is weird, but besides that I would assume that most of the very advanced features are quite niche, which is why they are rarely used.

The most used and most convenient Boom features are probably the less flashy ones that you probably don't notice- generalized linedefs (way more door customization), generalized sectors (sector effects on secret sectors!), codepointers on any DEH frame, removal of string length limits (map names can be longer than originals!), more customizable wall scrolling (scroll up, right, and down, and at different speeds), etc. These simpler additions make all the difference in choosing Boom over limit-removing, even if it might not look too different to the player.

[Tartlman]

Still using the vanilla hack is weird, but besides that I would assume that most of the very advanced features are quite niche, which is why they are rarely used.

The most used and most convenient Boom features are probably the less flashy ones that you probably don't notice- generalized linedefs (way more door customization), generalized sectors (sector effects on secret sectors!), codepointers on any DEH frame, removal of string length limits (map names can be longer than originals!), more customizable wall scrolling (scroll up, right, and down, and at different speeds), etc. These simpler additions make all the difference in choosing Boom over limit-removing, even if it might not look too different to the player.

Don't forget pushing sectors. non-hacky voodoo closets are arguably one of the most powerful features that boom offers.

[drfrag]

Can we have a 386 emulator mode in RUDE drfrag? I want to run Doom slower than a snail with leprosy.

Why? Did you own a 386? I had a SX and even with 4 screenblocks and low detail was still slow. But i had fun still.
That would be much harder to do, with a slow CPU you get more slowdown in complex areas, what i did was very quick. For that you just need an old computer emulator such as PCem or 86Box, and the roms and OSes.
A really freakish feature would be adding a 3x1 low detail mode in assembler, too late. It'd have really helped with 386s as AFAIK there a 4 VGA banks, they'd have added it back in the day. It doesn't look too bad, i've tried with Doom Retro as low detail is free there.

I don't think many people actually play Chocolate and take the risk of meeting a crash or one of those game breaking bugs, people use it to create vanilla maps but then they are played on GZDoom. Crispy still contains game breaking bugs (they need to keep 100% demo compatibility) and now it's adding some MBF and Boom features, clearly PrBoom+ is the best of all those "faithful" ports by far and others are doing again what already was done long ago. Doom retro is more popular but it doesn't even have working multiplayer.

[Enjay]

On a 386 Doom ran like shit.

Not true. I got it to run acceptably quickly. It looked like this...

---

[drfrag]

Hi Enjay, i've just written about my old Heresy project in the other thread and i remember you helped back then.
The minimum "playable" screen size was actually 4 screenblocks. But on a "fast" 386 you could play with 6.