LZDoom 3.88b 02/26 released

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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by mjr4077au »

Graf Zahl wrote:
3saster wrote:Yeah, any of the stock maps are poor choices for the rendered, they run so high it doesn't matter or really test it well (if they dont, you have bigger problems). For actual testing (with and without nomonsters), Sunder MAP09 and MAP15 are great test cases (Sunder in general is almost designed to be a benchmarking tool), as is that bridge in Frozen Time.
Other good maps are the view from the church steeple in Hellcore's MAP09 (you got to noclip there), the opening cave in P:AR's E1M6 and the crane in P:AR E1M3, especially when benchmarking less performant hardware.
Thanks, guys. I'll check all these out tomorrow :)
Graf Zahl wrote:
3saster wrote:From my experience on Nvidia hardware, Vulkan really shines when you start turning on certain effects. 32x multi sampling, for example, has a high framerate hit on OpenGL, but a negligable performance hit on Vulkan. On default settings, they are about equal for me, but once you start turning on various post processing effects and whatnot, Vulkan is way ahead for me when it matters.
Interesting. I normally run the game a6 8x MSAA, I never tried higher settings - but I think one problem that comes to the surface here is that in order to support original GL3 hardware the renderer cannot use the most efficient methods to set up its postprocessing chain - haven't we heard this story of old hardware getting in the way of performance a few times before...?
Definitely interesting, I didn't know that the setup was like this to support early GL3 cards. And old hardware not supported? Does that mean I can't use my trusty, high performance TNT2 M64 on Windows 98 SE anymore? I'm shocked! :wink: :D
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Graf Zahl »

Darkcrafter wrote:I always support and appreciate what Graf is doing as well as drfrag. But I honestly think Graf greatly underestimated the amount of people that have older hardware. How this happened you could ask - they simply didn't participate in poll e.g. didn't install GZDoom with polling code. I feel like there is a solid 20% of them.

What makes you think that low end users show such radically different behavior that they do not show up in the survey? If that was the case, the changes made in 2018 would have caused an uproar instead of a minor hubbub.

Sorry to be blunt, but I do not buy into such things. If your target group is large enough, chances are that it shows a picture that mirrors reality and that user engagement remains constant across all target groups. Which was very clearly evidenced in the survey right after the split into modern and vintage build. Compared to the number of downloads, user engagement for both builds was nearly identical in relation to the number of downloads, but the vast majority of vintage builds was used on systems that wouldn't have needed it.

No, the numbers we got simply do not support this theory of a large user group that prefers not to show itself. It sounds like a typical conspiracy theory to give more weight to one's own situation.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by sinisterseed »

Besides, the mystic group is more or less just that, a myth.

I suppose that the idea of its existence kind of just springs from the fact that surely, there must be others who are in the same boat. And yes, certainly, there are, but their numbers are grossly estimated from what I have seen until now. Looking at various hardware surveys such as Steam's, almost no one is still using ancient hardware, and it's no surprise to see that since modern software doesn't even run well on such systems, if at all - I am generally speaking here, and not just about games. Over time, aging hardware is no longer up for the job, support inevitably ceases, and upgrades are inevitable. It's how I finally managed to get rid of my rotten potato back in 2016 as well, it wasn't just that no game post-2006 ran adequately on it, but the system was struggling really badly to run anything, including Windows itself.

Anyway, tl;dr - Does an user base consisting of people running old/underpowered hardware? Absolutely. Are their numbers as big as some claim to be? I'm yet to see proof (reports, surveys, etc.) proving this.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Darkcrafter »

Well I still think some users just don't show up for some reasons, some users don't even install steam and so they don't get into statistics. What could be the other reason for increasing popularity of LZDoom here is that if you're a modder or map maker you always want to simplify life for your target audience and you don't know if they have a decent computer or a worse one with incompatible hardware so it simply can't run GZDoom so you put LZDoom into the package. Simply stupid, unpack or install the contents, click on a "play my mod" link on desktop and immediately play the game. I recently helped a guy from Doom facebook group who couldn't run all these things just because he was too old for this "advanced computer stuff" and so I included freedoom 2, brutal doom and hell on eath starter pack, LZDoom and a couple of *.bat files like "PotatoPC.bat" "FullPower.bat". Man some people even don't know what operating system is or "graphics card" is even so what open gl or vulkan are. Then I got a message from him describing me like good lord above ():)
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Rachael »

Darkcrafter wrote:I always support and appreciate what Graf is doing as well as drfrag. But I honestly think Graf greatly underestimated the amount of people that have older hardware. How this happened you could ask - they simply didn't participate in poll e.g. didn't install GZDoom with polling code. I feel like there is a solid 20% of them.
And this is Graf's problem because...?

If they wanted to be represented in the survey they should have participated. No identifying information was collected, and if they don't want to participate, it's their problem. The survey was put in place to see how many of them there still were. It was an opportunity for them to protect their own interests and make their voices heard. And when the survey showed that it was not enough people, the support was left behind.

If there was a significant number of these people as you suggest, outside of a very vocal minority (vocal minorities are always good at banging their metal cans the loudest and seeming like they're more numerous in number than they really are), I think we'd have seen it by now.

As for 20%? Good grief. Even the forum numbers don't bare that out. Talk about over-exaggerating. Almost everyone who posts in these topics have their GPU listed as having Vulkan support. I think I've seen one person *ever* who still had legacy hardware on their profile.

Darkcrafter please stop making assumptions and acting like they are true. It's a very annoying habit you have, and it is going to get you in trouble sooner or later here.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Graf Zahl »

Darkcrafter wrote:Well I still think some users just don't show up for some reasons, some users don't even install steam and so they don't get into statistics.
There's just something you forget. A survey whose number of participants is large enough gives enough data to recognize anomalies.
One anomaly that would have shown if this group of users really existed is a significantly reduced engagement ratio of vintage users. But that wasn't the case, the ratios for modern and vintage release were nearly identical. So your entire assumption would only pan out if the habits of users of the vintage release radically diverged from the users of the modern release - i.e. it would have necessitated both an abnormally high ratio of non-participants on low end hardware and to compensate an abnormally low ratio of vintage users on more modern hardware who were non-participants. And that's very, very unlilkely.

The problem people like you show is that you have no idea how statistics work and how to read statistics to detect such anomalies and factor them out of the decision making. So, rest assured, this user group simply does not exist in the size you make it out to be.
Darkcrafter wrote: What could be the other reason for increasing popularity of LZDoom here is that if you're a modder or map maker you always want to simplify life for your target audience and you don't know if they have a decent computer or a worse one with incompatible hardware so it simply can't run GZDoom so you put LZDoom into the package.
No, that's something that can be ruled out as a certainty. Content creators are rarely the people who stick to old potato-class hardware - they are also the kind who know best how unsatisfying it will be to run stuff on such toasters and for the most part not bother.

The only people who might consider this are either the users of such old hardware (those who refuse to acknowledge that their hardware is obsolete) or those susceptible to conspiracy theory nutjobbery. Because this is what conspiracy theories are made of - a large and anonymous group of people out there whose existence or non-existence cannot be proven but is needed to exist for making a bogus point.
Darkcrafter wrote: Simply stupid, unpack or install the contents, click on a "play my mod" link on desktop and immediately play the game. I recently helped a guy from Doom facebook group who couldn't run all these things just because he was too old for this "advanced computer stuff" and so I included freedoom 2, brutal doom and hell on eath starter pack, LZDoom and a couple of *.bat files like "PotatoPC.bat" "FullPower.bat". Man some people even don't know what operating system is or "graphics card" is even so what open gl or vulkan are. Then I got a message from him describing me like good lord above ():)
Yes, those exist. No, those are not the typical Doom user - and no you didn't do him a favor by giving him an old engine version just because you didn't want to go the extra mileage to first check out what his system's specs are.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Redneckerz »

Darkcrafter wrote:I always support and appreciate what Graf is doing as well as drfrag. But I honestly think Graf greatly underestimated the amount of people that have older hardware. How this happened you could ask - they simply didn't participate in poll e.g. didn't install GZDoom with polling code. I feel like there is a solid 20% of them.
A "feeling" does not translate to a "cold" number like a statistical 20%.

Whilst it very well might be that a significant amount of people run legacy hardware, those that do point this out generally are more informed than the group you describe.

That group: I agree that there is a point to be made that several folks likely aren't savvy enough to know even what a build or GZDoom is let alone a driver. Those get recommended LZDoom and voila, system runs well.

This does not highlight if that same system is modern enough to run GZDoom, because the quickest solution is chosen instead, namely getting the user a performant port.

But figuring out if the system is capable is a task of the user or relatives, not those of the developers.
Rachael wrote: I think I've seen one person *ever* who still had legacy hardware on their profile.
That would be me :) jk.

It is what it is. I don't expect any retroactive legacy support from GZ devs - but i will make a mention whether a mod relies on the advanced visual features. If not, then listing GZ requirements makes little sense imo.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Teddipetzi »

There's some interesting points being made, but there's actually one concern I have here:

If LZDoom establishes itself as a "GZDoom from the past" project that keeps around some features that were dropped for good reasons, like using that pixelated game font for the menus, but eventually cannot feature upgrade to GZDoom anymore it might cause a fracture in the community because it might cause a Zandronum effect where some modders may choose not to use the most recent features to provide wider support, while ultimately not reaching more users that way.

Seeing that its primary purpose is to provide support to users of older hardware, are there any plans to eventually discontinue it once this support is no longer needed?

In that regard, are there any plans to run a survey on LZDoom to get an idea what this port is actually being used for?
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Graf Zahl »

Redneckerz wrote: That would be me :) jk.

It is what it is. I don't expect any retroactive legacy support from GZ devs - but i will make a mention whether a mod relies on the advanced visual features. If not, then listing GZ requirements makes little sense imo.
What kind of graphics card do you have? You say NVidia Legacy - but the most recent NVidia cards not running OpenGL 3.3 are the Geforce 7xxx series which by now is 13-14 years old.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Graf Zahl »

Teddipetzi wrote:In that regard, are there any plans to run a survey on LZDoom to get an idea what this port is actually being used for?
For the other points you'll have to wait for drfrag to give an answer but about this issue he once said he doesn't believe in the value of surveys. I have to concur with you, though. A survey of LZDoom's user base would be really helpful to decide what kind of support is really needed in the future. I can't shake off the feeling that far too much work is being invested at the low end of the low end.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by drfrag »

It's not that i don't believe in the value of them but rather that they wouldn't be really useful for LZDoom, i know there are more people using old hardware but i don't know how many and i don't really care about the specifics. I would have dropped the g3.3mgw branch some time ago but then i received some support and continued, but i'm going to drop it anyway as soon as you merge the texture massive refactor. It's been two years of extended support for the old renderer now and i think it's more than enough. And i wouldn't be able to keep maintaining that branch anyway, it's getting out of date and harder to maintain and mod compatibility is starting to decrease. I was already doing manual merges. Besides now that dpJudas has developed Softpoly II continuing it wouldn't do any good. So i will switch to my master branch, it should survive the refactor. Sure that HAVE_OPENGL option will get in the way and then i'll have to adjust the multiple keyboard layouts thing.
Redneckerz is using a crappy Geforce 6150, i had a 6200 16 MB one (with turbo cache) and his is even worse. But he doesn't want to upgrade, i'm myself a poor guy and i know some people can't upgrade but i can't understand people who don't want to. Certainly if i could i would (well i did to some extent albeit lowend). He thinks it just works but it doesn't, he can't run GZDoom and anyway LZDoom will run with an awful performance there.
My personal situation is not good either so it's not what kind of support people need but what i can/want to do.I don't care much about the number of users actually.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Graf Zahl »

drfrag wrote: Redneckerz is using a crappy Geforce 6150,... But he doesn't want to upgrade... He thinks it just works but it doesn't, he can't run GZDoom and anyway LZDoom will run with an awful performance there.
Wow, and that still works? I still have an old computer from that era with a Geforce 6800 but running anything on it is just an exercise in frustration.
On that system, even a first generation GZDoom which had no higher features than OpenGL 1.5 couldn't run a mod like P:AR without exhibiting some serious performance issues.
drfrag wrote:It's been two years of extended support for the old renderer now and i think it's more than enough. And i wouldn't be able to keep maintaining that branch anyway, it's getting out of date and harder to maintain and mod compatibility is starting to decrease. I was already doing manual merges. Besides now that dpJudas has developed Softpoly II continuing it wouldn't do any good. So i will switch to my master branch, it should survive the refactor. Sure that HAVE_OPENGL option will get in the way and then i'll have to adjust the multiple keyboard layouts thing.
What precisely are your plans? If you upgrade to that, what's in there for your fork that the base GZDoom does not provide?
With the softpoly backend GZDoom can still run on all D3D9 hardware with the software renderer, provided the users are no longer on WinXP.

Also, don't you mean the HAVE_SOFTPOLY #defne? It shouldn't get in the way - it's not even configurable. I only added it because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to compile Raze with the full backend so I could selectively switch it off by editing the CMake script. So don't worry, in GZDoom there is also no way to do that aside from editing the project file.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by drfrag »

Speaking of frustration i'm playing Far Cry 4 here (Radeon R2) and usually it runs "well" but sometimes the action freezes for 5 seconds (only 4 GB of ram). Fortunately i was used to play Doom on a 386 so it's not that bad. :)

Right now, not that much but the idea is keeping support for 32 bit systems. But i really can't make plans for the future. Let's see i rebased all my stuff (and a few things more from PRs) on top on a recent GZDoom and then i keep merging with GZDoom so it's based on GZDoom master. Well there softpoly is the default with settings for better performance (software sector light mode alone doubles it) and there's the classic UI, the hardware cull options, HUD, different savegame order... And now something really heretical the double spawn skill property (those new skills for Doom and Heretic) and DM flag. It's fun and seems it's working well, needs more testing tough.
I released a test build here: https://devbuilds.drdteam.org/lzdoom/lz ... c45eab5.7z
Old LZDoom savegames are not compatible and later i made it able to load GZDoom savegames. I disabled Vulkan too since it targets a different audience.

The problem is not your HAVE_SOFTPOLY define but my HAVE_OPENGL one, i made some reestructuring in CMakelists to allow compiling with only D3D like the old ZDoom. And not that it's really useful but it runs with GDI only too. And AFAIK it still runs on XP :oops: (but may be it won't with a more recent OpenAL).
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by Graf Zahl »

If you stick to XP you won't be able to update your code, there was quite a bit of stuff that had to conditionally load functions not available on XP, but I have removed all of that.

32 bit is still there in GZDoom but last year's numbers were extremely clear: The number was small - very small. The last survey has a measly 261 users on 32 bit, that's 1.4%. And that was last summer - by now Windows 7 has been retired and this has led to a large number of system upgrades, which means that many of these users have switched to 64 bit by now. I expect this to become totally irrelevant after this year's Christmas season.
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Re: LZDoom 3.85 02/29 released

Post by drfrag »

I don't care about XP but last time i checked it still worked in my master branch (i tested GDI) and that was not long ago.
About 32 bit well we'll see when the time comes for now i want to do a final release from the current branch soon.

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