GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Discuss anything ZDoom-related that doesn't fall into one of the other categories.
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sinisterseed
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by sinisterseed »

Graf Zahl wrote:... which still doesn't make people abandon these cards. We still got 15% of users on non-Vulkan hardware, which by all accounts has been EOL'd by their manufacturers - some even using hardware that's 15-16 years old by now.
Which isn't surprising at all, especially if they do not "feel the need to upgrade".

For those people it doesn't matter whether their hardware is or isn't Vulkan compatible, as long as it still works for whatever antiquated use it may be serving to its owner. They, naturally, don't take security seriously either, least of all upgrading because their hardware is too old for even more basic purposes (even browsers have gotten stricter with what kind of hardware it supports over the years). Inability to use the latest graphics APIs is the least of their concerns, assuming they've got any.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by Gez »

sinisterseed wrote:Which isn't surprising at all, especially if they do not "feel the need to upgrade".
Don't forget those who do not feel the budget to upgrade...
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by sinisterseed »

Gez wrote:
sinisterseed wrote:Which isn't surprising at all, especially if they do not "feel the need to upgrade".
Don't forget those who do not feel the budget to upgrade...
I'm not talking about those - which I also belong to, so it's a bit disingenous to bring this up.

I'm talking about the upgrade resistant crowd specifically, who will always find an excuse to stick to hardware made some 10-20yrs ago despite having the means to upgrade, perhaps easily too.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by dpJudas »

Everyone has the means to upgrade over a 15 year period. If they didn't, then how did they manage to acquire the first computer in the first place?
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by sinisterseed »

dpJudas wrote:Everyone has the means to upgrade over a 15 year period. If they didn't, then how did they manage to acquire the first computer in the first place?
An interesting question with perhaps, a less interesting answer.

It can be a multitude of reasons. The PC could have been a gift, a prize, from a giveaway, donation, from family, or simply purchased at a time when money wasn't a concern. In 15yrs a lot can change, maybe even too much, from rich to poor or even vice versa (lmao not under capitalism). But you get my point. We've seen how much could change in two years of a global pandemic after all.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by dpJudas »

Yes okay but if you are that poor, then how could you afford the internet connection to download GZDoom? All you had to do was to save $0.12 per day and you'd been able to buy a $700 PC after 15 years. Keep in mind that we are talking about you not having one period of income for the last 15 years you could have used to upgrade it - that's just very very unlikely.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by sinisterseed »

dpJudas wrote:Yes okay but if you are that poor, then how could you afford the internet connection to download GZDoom? All you had to do was to save $0.12 per day and you'd been able to buy a $700 PC after 15 years. Keep in mind that we are talking about you not having one period of income for the last 15 years you could have used to upgrade it - that's just very very unlikely.
Indeed, but it can also easily happen when shit happens, too.

Like saving up and delaying upgrades until you think the time is finally more reasonable, except that there will be no such thing if, after you've saved up all that money, you have to spend it on an emergency, and then something else shows up, again, and again, and again, the cycle repeating until the upgrade gets postphoned indefinitely because of far more pressing issues.

Thus, an upgrade you may have planned to do within a two year period may easily extend to five and beyond. Life's a bitch like that sometimes.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by dpJudas »

While I agree with the fact that life can be cruel, there's just something about such a long time period that makes me feel you need an extraordinary good explanation for why you can't possibly have gotten a new one. These people expect me to accept at face value that they never had money, never chose to divert it elsewhere, had no scavenging skills at all, couldn't buy used hardware, and so on.

As a developer it is quite difficult to find a reasonable cutoff point -- at some point I just can't accept the "I can't afford it" argument anymore. The ten year cutoff Microsoft has used for Windows has always seemed like a reasonable compromise to me. Yet on this forum it is always humored like its reasonable that someone could have brought up a teenager without ever been able to upgrade the PC. It's ridiculous to me.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by wildweasel »

From my experience collecting "retro" computers, it's often not extremely hard to find, if not new computers, then newer than before computers, for knockdown prices if you're willing to sift through places like e-cycling centers, or even for as-good-as-free if you have acquaintances who just upgraded themselves. A decently spec'd brand-new computer is $800-1000 USD? Then last year's model is probably $500. The model from the year before last is probably down to $350. If you're OK with getting something from the mid-to-late 2010s, you might be able to get a good certified-refurbished for less than $200 with some searching. Sure, it won't get you quite as future-proofed as a Brand New Computer would, but if you're still kicking around that 2004 Dell Dimension that only has 3 PCI slots and a Celeron D, even a Local Craigslist special in dire need of an air-dusting would be an upgrade from that.

[edit] On a random lark, I checked my own local Craigslist listings and found this guy:


While it doesn't include a graphics card, it's got decent enough onboard graphics to at least start GZD, and is a mere $60.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by sinisterseed »

dpJudas wrote:While I agree with the fact that life can be cruel, there's just something about such a long time period that makes me feel you need an extraordinary good explanation for why you can't possibly have gotten a new one. These people expect me to accept at face value that they never had money, never chose to divert it elsewhere, had no scavenging skills at all, couldn't buy used hardware, and so on.

As a developer it is quite difficult to find a reasonable cutoff point -- at some point I just can't accept the "I can't afford it" argument anymore. The ten year cutoff Microsoft has used for Windows has always seemed like a reasonable compromise to me. Yet on this forum it is always humored like its reasonable that someone could have brought up a teenager without ever been able to upgrade the PC. It's ridiculous to me.
And I agree wholeheartedly on that.

Don't misunderstand, I'm mostly hypothetically speaking about various scenarios for why people can't or do not want to upgrade, but naturally past a certain point it just reaches the point of absurdity. 10yrs is indeed a very reasonable time frame to both enjoy your PC to its fullest, then slowly start saving up for the next when it stops being able to keep up with the new requirements that modern software demands. I find it highly unlikely that even a decade isn't enough to upgrade, and at that point hardware advancements will be so great that whatever new hardware of the future will almost be guaranteed to be superior to whatever you're currently rocking.

And if you don't care for upgrading "because you don't need all this new fancy stuff", then at the very least have the decency to stop demanding new software to cater to the vilest potatoes in existence. You may "not care" for it, but there are plenty of reasons why others do, even if you don't, and the cut off enavitably happens after such a long time, where new hardware cannot be properly supported without leaving the legacy baggage behind. Sad as it is, the world moves on without you.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by Graf Zahl »

sinisterseed wrote: And if you don't care for upgrading "because you don't need all this new fancy stuff", then at the very least have the decency to stop demanding new software to cater to the vilest potatoes in existence. You may "not care" for it, but there are plenty of reasons why others do, even if you don't, and the cut off enavitably happens after such a long time, where new hardware cannot be properly supported without leaving the legacy baggage behind. Sad as it is, the world moves on without you.
That's definitely where I draw the line - and if I had to guess, most people who are short on money but realize the need for upgrading will find a way to do so - even if it's hard to put aside the money.

Most of the ones who claim to be "stuck" with an outdated potato are the kind that feels entitled to let others pay for their upgrade resistance - because that's what actually happens if software has to cater to these laggards.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by SanyaWaffles »

I apologize for the wordiness, but I have a lot to say about this matter.

As someone who is still on disability for the time being and has very little money to spend all the time, I can sympathize with not having enough of a budget to upgrade. I'm still stuck on a GTX 1080. It's a good card, but it's definitely showing its age, especially since I did scrunge up the funds last year to replace my aging (but still decent) Intel i7 setup with an AMD Ryzen 7. I didn't replace the graphics card due to the shortage because cryptobros are parasites, that and the 1080 still works, so I figured it'd be okay to wait until the prices returned to normal.

However, I accept eventually it will become obsolete. It's all ready 5 years old and can't do raytracing as far as I can tell, and the latest games have some issues at times with graphical fidelity and performance. At some point I will upgrade, especially cuz there's legitimate workflow reasons to upgrade for shit like Blender and possibly even GZDoom soon.

I don't like shaming people for being poor, but if you're really in such a bind that you can't afford to even try to buy parts piecemeal every now and then (which you can do and it's what I do), you probably need to prioritize finances a bit better like I have done.

However, I don't even think that's it at the end of the day to be honest. I have no fucking clue truthfully what it is, but the skeptic in me wants to believe that it's literally people, in the case of GZDoom at least, "it's based on a 1993 game so why can't it run on my old hardware". They forget it's supposed to be a modern source port with modern features. They also forget for the moment everything in that engine is dynamic as it's really hard to make a mesh from the level data. I hear it's even more so with Build since it's not just non-euclidian but everything can theoretically move.

I know GZDoom can be improved - and it is being improved as we speak - but it does get routinely exhausting to have to constantly have to explain to people the nuances of this engine over and over again. And when advancements happen that make the engine work better at the expense of older hardware, people complain.

Fun story on that subject: I've had one person go out of their way to antagonize me and other people at Waffle Iron Studios because we weren't going to offer any 32-bit support for Project Absentia. This was one person out of like... hundreds of people at the time who had noticed our project and responded or otherwise engaged with us. I'm gonna guess and say one person out of about 200 people. And this person made the biggest fit, calling us and other devs who did similar "64-bit supremacists" like it was some sort of race war bullshit. (To be fair, I have it on good authority this person will complain about pretty much anything up to and including how you breathe, so that could be a factor).

I'd like to think it was an isolated incident, but it seems, even if they are an extreme vocal minority, it seems to be people genuinely believe this shit.

I have friends and colleagues who are in worse prediciments than I am, and even they have capable hardware.

Also, tangentially related, what really twindles my scrungles is dealing with people who refuse to upgrade beyond Windows 7. It borderlines on evangelical sometimes.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by Phredreeke »

GTX 1080 is still plenty for GZDoom though. I think the earliest nVidia cards to support Vulkan is the 600 series (excluding a few low end cards which were rebranded Fermi units), and we're still not at the stage of saying goodbye to OpenGL yet.
sinisterseed wrote:And if you don't care for upgrading "because you don't need all this new fancy stuff", then at the very least have the decency to stop demanding new software to cater to the vilest potatoes in existence. You may "not care" for it, but there are plenty of reasons why others do, even if you don't, and the cut off enavitably happens after such a long time, where new hardware cannot be properly supported without leaving the legacy baggage behind. Sad as it is, the world moves on without you.
One thing I don't get is that there are plenty of other Doom ports out there. Why do they insist on using GZDoom if they don't care about fancy stuff?
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by fakemai »

Blzut3 wrote:It'll probably be 2024 maybe 2025 before Maxwell is dropped.
That doesn't mean the old drivers stop existing, NVIDIA provide older downloads, Debian has nvidia-legacy-* as well. If I'm really stuck though, Nouveau is playable with OpenGL ES, and with the official drivers getting open sourced it'll probably see further improvement.
sinisterseed wrote:Speaking of which, I would honestly not recommend going for Maxwell cards at this point in time.
For some it's a matter of taking what you can get. Also it's never been the case that GZDoom should have similar requirements to Doom but saying it requires a high-end gaming setup is plain wrong.
Phredreeke wrote:One thing I don't get is that there are plenty of other Doom ports out there. Why do they insist on using GZDoom if they don't care about fancy stuff?
Maybe they don't? The high-end graphical features are sharp diminishing returns for what they actually add to many mods and can be played with them unsupported or turned off, or if really necessary, locally modded out.
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Re: GZDoom Development for x86 & x64 systems

Post by Rachael »

Alright I am sorry but this is slowly starting to look like a poor-shaming thread now - and this is coming from someone who, if I was an asshole, could probably just say "there but for the grace of God go I." I actually consider myself extremely lucky as of late, but I haven't forgot where I came from.

And that is why reading some of these posts is making me sick. Yes, you do have to prioritize your finances - but that doesn't mean cutting out entertainment or technology completely. Nor should anyone ever feel that is the only choice they have. Entertainment is a part of living - without it, what's the point? And why do some posts in this thread, I dunno ... almost do sound like they are shaming people who indeed are trying to do right by their pocket books? In general ... some of the posts in this thread have felt honestly hostile towards poor people - and from people I didn't expect, at that. Can't win if you do, can't win if you don't, because the sin is being poor to begin with, it's not what you try and do about it.

Now that being said - there is a catch. That doesn't mean people on poor low-end hardware can make demands - especially of those who do the work for free. GZDoom has always been a modern source port, and will continue being a modern source port, and if you get left behind, it's part of why we have an archive where older versions are still available. You have no right to shame the developers for not catering to YOUR specific needs. If that is your game here, kindly just fuck off.

I feel sympathy for people who can't afford to upgrade their tech. I really do. But I am also grateful for all the work that has been done - and continues to be done to this day. It's unreasonable to make demands that we cater to every single computer that has ever existed since the dawn of mankind. I am not trying to "two sides" this issue. This is the most logical and reasonable position I think anyone could have.

And with that said, I think this thread has reached the end of its usefulness.
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