recently I noticed that the startup screen (e.g. the Hexen STARTUP.DAT) is being displayed fullscreen instead of windowed as it was before. If it is fullscreen and 5:4 in ration, black empty space is displayed to the graphics right and left. Can this somehow be forced being displayed as a window again before the game launches to fullscreen?
Not without considerable work. The old startup window code was completely rewritten in order to make it cross platform and behave more like most other modern games.
I might improve how it displays things during startup, since I'm not entirely happy with the fixed resolution and how complicated it is to make it look more fancy, but I do not have any plans for making the load screen its own window again. For example, with your startup screen, I'd rather have it fill out the sides with that dark blue color than have it show up in a window.
I'd be okay filling it out but how would I do this? I thought the STARTUP.DAT has a fixed resolution and can't be made multi-resolution compatible anyway? (e.g. 16:9, 21:9, 5:4, etc)
You're right - you can't do it right now. But I think we need something better instead of that old Hexen startup.dat where you have more flexibility (including animation, maybe movie playback) while it loads the game.
The new code has at least eliminated the requirement for using the old file formats, though, which is nice.
The STARTUP background graphic still has to be 640x480, but as long as it's a graphic the engine can read it will load. Same for NOTCH, minus the size requirement.
AFADoomer wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2024 4:48 pm
The STARTUP background graphic still has to be 640x480, but as long as it's a graphic the engine can read it will load. Same for NOTCH, minus the size requirement.
I take it that there is no way to use any of the usual ways to replace the graphic with a hi-res version?
I'm assuming no (because none of those methods will have loaded at that early stage) but I just thought I'd check.
Either way, being able to use PNGs (etc) now is a real help. Much easier than the old arcane formats.
Bonus question: Does GZDoom ever use the netnotch graphic? When starting a net game, GZDoom does things differently to how Hexen et al would have done.
Enjay wrote: ↑Wed Dec 25, 2024 4:27 pm
I take it that there is no way to use any of the usual ways to replace the graphic with a hi-res version?
I'm assuming no (because none of those methods will have loaded at that early stage) but I just thought I'd check.
I've tried and no, that does not work - at least not right now. I think it's a bit too early in the loading process to use subsystems like that so it probably would be better if eventually sometime down the line it just supports loading screens of an arbitrary resolution.
The first commit allows any resolution for the boot logo image(no longer restricted to a super low resolution) and opens up for allowing future work adding more images. The second just makes STARTUPSONG always work.
I am not sure if the backends in GZDoom are sufficiently booted yet for this to be directly cherry-pickable into GZDoom. It may be that more of the shaders have to be booted - VKDoom's backend creates shaders on first use while GZDoom uses a system where it first creates only one and then later on creates the rest.
Well, that would cover both of the things I've observed recently about the startup in GZDoom - i.e. that it would be nice to have increased resolution support and the bug I reported a few days ago with the notch sound interrupting the music.
It sounds like GZDoom might not be ready to adopt these changes though. Perhaps in time. The future possibility of adding more images (and perhaps even scripting?) to the startup is certainly intriguing too.
Someone could try cherry-pick the two commits I linked and see if they work or not. I just wasn't entirely sure if they would and thus didn't ask Rachael to grab them as I don't want to put in the work addressing the backend issue if it turns out not to work. I don't think it is too much work to fix if it doesn't work out of the box though.
The notch bug really surprises me as I would never have expected playing a sound to affect music playback. It sure sounds like a strange bug with what little I know about the GZDoom audio subsystem.
OK, well, interesting, I just tried "vkdoom-windows-prerelease" from here https://github.com/dpjudas/VkDoom/releases
and it also shows the notch sound bug. It's really hard to tell with the default Hexen game, because it loads so fast. I probably only get a note of music playing and then the notches take over.
With a bigger project that takes longer to load, it's obvious. As described with the GZDoom bug, I get ~1 second of music but it falls silent when the notch sounds start.
I know that the video says GZDoom, but this was actually captured with VkDoom. GZDoom and VkDoom behave in the same way.
The modem-like bleepy sound right at the start is actually the music (it sounds better when the whole thing plays - its a sort of scanning sound from Cyberpunk 2077). It should play for most of the video. However, it only plays for a moment and then the notch sounds take over. Even when they fall silent, due to the game loading, the music should play, but doesn't. The music file is much longer than the litte burst that you hear in the video.
The sound from the video:
The music should play throughout the loading, from when it starts until the end notch sound plays. It used to do this with the old (windowed) starup but both GZDoom and VkDoom behaves as shown above.
FWiW, the final "end notch" is done using the SNDINFO entry "misc/startupdone". This is actually a Strife feature, but it plays in all game startups once the loading is finished (even Doom, without a specific Startup being defined). It should be irrelevant to the problem.
Edit: For what it's worth, here's the same startup in an old version of GZDoom with the little windowed startup. I couldn't capture the visuals, so what you see in the video is just a placeholder graphic, but the sounds demonstrate the music playing right through.
The "music" starts (almost simultaneously with the notches), you get a quick burst of notch sounds, the notches stop (because the game is loading slowly) but the music continues. Then you get the end notch, the music staops and the titlemap sound starts. In other words, the timing is much the same as the previous video but, importantly, this one plays the "music" throughout the loading process.
I haven't tried to debug that bug, but my guess would be that it isn't really the notch sound doing it, but rather something early in the load phase that asks the audio subsystem to stop the song. Presumably as something it does between all maps.
I realise this isn't conclusive - because the game may be trying to access some internally defined notch sound (in vkdoom.pk3 or gzdoom.pk3 sndinfo) but disabling the sounds in my mod by either commenting them out of my sndinfo or removing the sound files from my pk3 does not allow the music to play for any longer. As per the videos, there is a brief "blip" of music then it stops and I get silence until the titlemap starts. So, even without the notch sounds being played, the music still stops prematurely.
