/vr/ - Retro Games

In game screenshots

I'll try it out, but you'll probably get more traction in the doom thread.

>>9499020
I didn't see the Doom thread kinda new to this board. When this thread archives I'll post it there.

Wheres all the remasters and remakes of these? Or maybe I don't know about them yet

>>9499307
GZDoom seems to be the most advanced current source port for Doom. This image is from a Doom 2 mod. I just started mapping and my PC is a toaster so I'm using ZDoom which is a lot simpler.

>>9498670
If you like Doom and mapping for Doom, you should check out the Doom general on this board, it's probably one of the least worst generals on the entire site, because there's always new materials and developments to talk about due to the regular output of new content the Doom fandom as a whole has exhibited for 29 years and counting now. Compare to Katawa Shoujo General on /vg/, which is about a single standalone VN, and they ran out of things to talk about 10 almost years ago, so now it's just a circlejerk of habit.

There's quite a lot of OC these days, because a couple of years back everyone was bit pretty hard by the mapping bug, so people have been collaborating on a bunch of mapping projects ever since.
Quality has varied, since some are more novice, while others are more experienced and have firmer grasps on visual design and gameplay design (and some people lead projects better than others), but a lot has been very good, some guys there are VERY talented as mappers.

>>9499307
Not all that much point because the original was both great in visual design and very fun to play, there's little about it which has "aged". The sourcecode was published in like 1997, so fans have just developed their own .exes for running the game with whatever kind of enhancements they want.
It would be competing with decades and decades of fan content, some which is very high quality. You can criticize Doom 2016 for a lot, but contrary to some dumbasses insistence, it not being basically a remake of the first game was for its own good, it simply would not have been able to compete at all, it'd be falling in that stupid Hollywood trap where they do weak or awful remakes of great classics which already got things right the first time around.

If you wanted to play without the old archaic 'infinite height' quirk, and maybe use a more natural feeling full freelook, instead of being locked to horizontal mouseturning with a vertical aim assist, then GzDoom would let you do exactly that.
Can be argued as cheating, as it would give you some abilities you wouldn't have in the original game, but free aiming actually doesn't make that big of a difference in most of the original levels, and complete collision detection to let monsters and players move above and below each other properly actually confers benefits to the enemies against the player (to the point that a few encounters actually become a LOT harder), so it's a more 'fair' change in that sense.

Free aiming makes the final boos fight in Doom 2 trivially easy, but that fight isn't actually that exciting or fun anyway, and it's just about the only spot in the original levels where being able to actually aim up or down seriously changes how the level actually plays. Bigger concerns is jumping and crouching, which let you move to places you aren't supposed to in MANY maps (including most custom ones), often breaking sequence and letting you skip intended parts, even entire levels, or creating softlocks.

>>9499307
GzDoom has a hardware renderer on by default, some like that, some don't, but what most people object to is that it has an ugly smudge filter on by default, simply because that's what the lead dev prefers. This looks ugly as fuck, but it can be turned off, some find the options a little confusing to go through, but they did actually add a search function which makes it easy to find settings. There's also an imitation light mode setting which makes the shadows and the dark look more like in the original, and there's both a software mode as well as a legacy compatibility mode for older or less powerful hardware, along with a Vulcan renderer for hardware which perform better with that.

GzDoom has gotten a lot of flak for being resource intensive and having poor performance with a lot of machines, and some of that is pretty damn fair, but they have also put a lot of effort into accommodating more hardware in the past year or so. There's some things which it just doesn't handle that well and which can be demanding, but part of that is because underneath all of the fancy and modern shit developed for the past 20+ years, there's a bunch of the original Doom still there, and Doom comes from an era where multithreading wasn't a thing, thus today, where much of our CPU power comes from multithreading, modern processors may not be all that well suited for handling something like GzDoom when it gets real intense.

Whether or not GzDoom is the way you want to play just 'core Doom' in 2022 is up to you, there's pros and cons, but most people will tell you that the main reason for using it is that it has shitloads of options for mods, ranging from small tweaks and features to massive overhauls that change the entire game in all kinds of different ways.

>>9499307
If you want the original gameplay experience, but just upgraded, then what I'll suggest is the Woof! sourceport:
>'Limit removing' and plays 'semi-advanced' level formats such as Boom, MBF, and MBF21
>Has a bunch of nifty quality of life features regarding resolution, crosshair options, some HUD options, etc
>Has some minor aesthetic options, such as making the Barons and Knights actually make green blood splatters, and the Caco make blue blood splatters, as well as a toggle for making monsters' deaths randomly flipped horizontally, which makes places full of dead bodies look a little bit less copy pasted, also an option for a 'recoil' visual when firing the guns (slightly tilting the view up and then down really fast)
>Has a 'faux' Brightmap feature, where textures and sprites with particular bright features on them render as bright in the dark, making things like computer monitors, switches, lights, and the glowing eyes of some monsters actually stand out in the dark, like in Duke Nukem 3D
>(GzDoom does this better via using actual referenced spritemaps for more varied light levels and avoiding certain potential issues with some custom textures, but the fake ones still look quite good and they rarely create visual problems)
>Full mouse support, and it has support for using a gamepad if you want, even using it at the same time as a mouse if you want to

Adding to that, a mod which even purists enjoy is the Sprite Fixing Project.
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/62403-doom-2-minor-sprite-fixing-project-v20-release-updated-112822/
You can use this mod by putting it in the relevant autoload folders for GzDoom or Woof!, or by using a .wad managing software such as DoomLauncher.

What this does is fix a couple of stray or missing pixels on a couple of the sprites, as well as adjusts the alignment of the sprites, as iD Software didn't actually bother doing this very well to begin with. With alignments adjusted for the monsters, the animations actually look a LOT smoother (without going to such an extreme such as the monsters in the Smooth Doom mod, which look weird and janky in animation). Presumably Adrian Carmack was determined to do it this way from the get go, but then got lazy and just threw them in haphazardly without actually adjusting them.

Another thing it does is add the cut rotations for Doomguy, Zombies, Imps, and Pinkies, which were skipped before the original release to bring the filesize down. Now when you see these guys in action, they actually have proper left and rights instead of being mirrored on one side. Adds rotation frames to the secret Wolfenstein SS enemy when he shoots, too, for what that's worth.

The original Baron Of Hell graphic was also done from a physical sculpted clay model on a poseable wood doll (like you'd find in an art supply store). This gave a detailed appearance with good and natural shading, but the lamps used to light the model would warm up the clay as they went, and those dolls are awkward to pose as is, so he actually broke a few times, leading to a few spots which are inconsistent on a couple of frames after repairs. The spritefix mod retouches those little parts to address that, and does the same for the Hell Knight.

It's the original designs and graphics of Doom, just doing that last bit of polish which iD Software neglected to do when implementing them.

>>9498670
>Please leave abuse and suggestions.

I enjoyed this. It's old-school, it's made from stock textures, it looks like a Doom level. No out-of-place new textures, palettes, or other modernities.

I ignored the source port requirement. The first map doesn't need any more than vanilla abilities from the player, although it might need a source port that removes vanilla rendering limits. I got halfway through the second map before I sadly found I needed to crouch to progress.

Repetition of "walk down corridor, walls open up in front of you, monsters emerge" became stale after a while, especially when it continued into the second map. Change it up a bit. That said, I liked the consistent theme. Gives the impression of a cohesive whole, and improves immersion.

Secrets need more hinting. Don't make the player hump on every single wall on the slight off-chance it is a door. I guessed there was a rocket launcher on map01 because you gave me ammo for it, but the door shows nothing to suggest it is a door. Likewise for the plasma gun on the second map, how am I supposed to know to push on the back of the closet? The chainsaw secret is much better in that regard, especially as you have at that point primed the player to look for things to crouch into.

Conversely a lot of the wall lights look like secret doors on the automap, consider making them single-sided so players don't go wasting their time humping them.

On map02 the texture under the window in the crate room needs realignment. Probably just a missing lower unpegging flag.

It's a bit easy. Even on Ultra-Violence I cleared both maps without dying on first try. But I guess you'll be adding nastier monsters gradually in later maps. (I didn't pistol-start the second map because the pile of resources in the first map's exit room suggested you intend the player to carry their inventory forward.)

The sprote fixing project is awesome.

>>9500405
Thanks for your feedback very much appreciated.

>>9500405
I'm thinking for the next map a short maze of air vents and utility rooms that emerge into a reactor and turbine hall for a boss fight which will open an exit out of the complex into an outdoor cliff for the level after. Gonna utilize ZDoom's jump function and work in some platform elements where you have to jump between cliffs on your way to the final exit.

>>9500405
About the secrets, the plan is to put directions in the readme that I havn't written yet and release this as a zip file with 2 files. Or maybe put the secrets in a text file inside the wad itself so if you open it in Slade you see a text file called SECRETS.

map 01 the secret is in the room with the red keycard.
map 02 has 2 secrets. Through the vent in the server room and in the back of the safe with the red key in it.

The music is so different between GZDoom and Chocolate doom while playing Heretic. Is chocolate using FM synth? I usually like that better, but it doesn't sound very good.

>>9502423
Make sure to set your .sf2 file with FluidSynth, GzDoom lets you do that from the menu, but a lot of the other ports don't do that for whatever reason, requiring you to edit your config file. The default sound of FluidSynth is alright, but for a lot of these games, they were composed around the Roland Sound Canvas 55, thus an .sf2 which imitates that sound tends to give the sexiest results.

>>9502426
based, thanks. never played anything but doom and quake

>>9502512
Heretic and Hexen are both brilliant.