No frontend for the new Doomsday 2.0

aor000

I've just downloaded the portable version of the new Doomsday 2.0, and discovered that it have no frontend like the former Doomsday Engine 1.58 with its Snowberry, and that the operation is within Doomsday Engine itself.
Because of this, I can't assign commend line commands from the original Doom games like -turbo, -respawn, -warp, -skill and -fast like I used to do in Snowberry. Also, I can't reduce the number of sound channels so that only one sound can be heard at a time (In Snowberry, I setted 5 sound channels).
It is possible to get back all of the stuff that were in Doomsday Engine 1.58 to Doomsday 2.0?

John

Does this thread help any?

http://dengine.net/talk/discussion/2398/pwad-individual-warp-function/p1

skyjake

As John mentions, I've added options equivalent to -warp and -skill to custom profiles in the 2.1 unstable builds.

The rest of the options can be added a bit later: https://tracker.dengine.net/issues/2238

When it comes to the sound channels, I've added this feature request: https://tracker.dengine.net/issues/2237

aor000

Fronted is much more comfortable for me than using custom profiles. It was better to retain the Snowberry fronted rather than abandoning it in favor of custom profiles.
Version 1.58 is much more comfortable for me than the new 2.0 because of this.

skyjake

I'm sorry to hear that, but the reality is that developing a separate frontend application was not a feasible long-term solution. I believe we will be better off by improving Doomsday itself.

If you can elaborate on what exactly made the frontend more comfortable for you, I'm happy to take that into consideration for future improvements in Doomsday's UI.

(The frontend's Python source code is also available, so if anyone wishes to maintain it as a separate project, I can provide guidance and help with interfacing it to Doomsday.)

Tolwyn

How about adding a text box that will pass command line arguments when the profile is launched instead of a custom profile?

skyjake

I understand what you're suggesting, and there will certainly be a way to configure the games with more options via profiles. However, command line options have a very specific technical meaning and implementation, so it isn't really appropriate to modify them at runtime in that fashion.

skyjake

Tolwyn wrote: »

How about adding a text box that will pass command line arguments when the profile is launched instead of a custom profile?

How does this sound: https://tracker.dengine.net/issues/2241 ?

Tolwyn

If one has to edit a file...
And that file is in:

/user/myusername/some other directory/appdata/local/I hate stuff putting things here/Deng Engine/profiles/cvars/autoexec.cfg

Then it's a pain in the ass, to be blunt.

Tolwyn

When it gets harder than this, there is a problem:

doom2.exe -file mywad.wad mymus.wad -warp 15 -skill 2 -fast -record mydemo

Tolwyn

Don't get me wrong. I'm just being an old cranky guy and expressing some frustrations.

aor000

I think it is better to retain Snowberry frontend. Its interface is much more comfortable than editing configuration file like autoexec.cfg, and the interface of Snowberry was much easier than the internal interface of doomsday engine itself.

skyjake

@Tolwyn: Well, if you prefer a command line for entering the configuration, you can of course do that via the actual system command line. This will also bypass Home entirely. See the Readme for details...

Something along the lines of:

doomsday.exe -userdir c:\runtime -game doom2 -file mywad.wad mymus.wad -warp 15 -skill 2 -fast

Then have your custom commands in c:\runtime\autoexec.cfg.

skyjake

aor000 wrote: »

the interface of Snowberry was much easier than the internal interface of doomsday engine itself.

IMO, Snowberry's UI was quite confusing. What do you think made it easier than the current Home? Is there perhaps a particular operation that you find cumbersome, or a missing feature? That kinds of things can be alleviated in future versions.

PostFatal

I was a fan of snowberry too. tick boxes and simple yes/no on/off beats the heck out of typing commands. I am really not understanding this make a profile thing, I can't seem to find anything about it. If the older doomsday could use the new models and renderer I would have stuck with it. even now I can't figure out how to set taskbar to come up using ' (the non cap of ~) I liked having a single key to press to bring up the taskbar instead of the combo shift/esc.

Bob Hoskins

Just to add my 2 cents, I'm a big fan of the interface being within Doomsday itself. From a design perspective, it's much more consistent with most other commercial offerings. If there are settings missing that were previously passed in from Snowberry then as Skyjake says, let him know and they can be easily added to the modern and functionally rich interface in Doomsday.

aor000

The older interfaces are always better than the modern one. And the use of Snowberry for the profiles is much easier for me than the doomsday engine itself, because of its simple window interface, as well as selecting custom WAD files to operate and all of the option that snowberry had (Mainly setting the number of sound channels and parameters like -respawn, -warp, -skill, -fast and -turbo).
Most people misleadingly think that the modern interfaces with "Improved experience" elements are better, where in fact only useful for very expert users and developers, and are much harder to use, and I'm not one of those people.
There are reasons why D-Fend Reloaded and other frontend was developed to Dosbox DOS emulator. For me, Doomsday Engine without Snowberry or an other frontend, is the same as Dosbox without D-Fend Reloaded...

skyjake

@PostFatal Check out the Command prompt section in the readme about setting a shortcut key: http://dengine.net/manual/guide/2.0/readme_windows#command_prompt

The catch is that at the moment, the shortcut key is set for Doom, Heretic and Hexen separately. It also needs to be set only when a game is loaded. These quirks are due to bindings being game-oriented. I'll likely make some changes in the future so that there can be global bindings, too, that are saved separate from the games' .cfg files.

Tolwyn

I'll keep playing with the frontend and custom profiles and such. See if I can work around it.

It's good to know what I can launch doomsday with command line parameters.