Something I've been meaning to mention; in the last few builds, the old 6.x beta bug/issue with the positions of the explosions from the Boss Brain's death in Doom2/TNT/Plutonia appears to have returned.
In the new build 409:
The intermission screens no longer display the 'entering XXXX' for a second or two when you press a key, in Doom2/TNT/Plutonia/HacX.
The overwrite quick save dialog in HacX prints the yes or no line twice.
The Red Key mob in HacX appears to be broken: instead of appearing as a folder that gives you the red key (called a password by the in game messages), it instead displays as a broken computer monitor that gives you a random key when you pick it up (from all three).
Invisible Buzzers in HacX seem to be gaining the spawnceiling flag from somewhere.
1) This seems to have popped up in recent builds. Is anyone still getting weird player movement/acceleration issues? Still seems at times (mostly when I strafe) that I'm in turbo mode or something, and the movement can sometimes get really fast.
2) I see the IDBEHOLDx cheat works again, but there still is one remaining issue with it. In Doomsday, you cannot toggle off the IDBEHOLDx cheats (you were able to do so in Vanilla Doom). For example, if you had a Radiation Suit in effect, you could use IDBEHOLDR to disable the Radiation Suit. The only two IDBEHOLDx powerups that cannot be toggled off in Vanilla Doom are the Computer Area Map (IDBEHOLDA, which cannot be toggled off after enabling the cheat), and the Berserk (typing in IDBEHOLDS removes the red tint from the screen if it is there, but does not remove the extra power added to the Fist).
3) I saw some of the game ending issues were fixed, like the blank monster sprites during the Doom II cast of monsters. Was the issue of only being able to bring up the menu with Escape when a monster is in its dying animation supposed to have been fixed for build 409? I'm still getting this issue.
What about issues where in some maps of some wads, the switches or floor pressure points not opening certain doors/walls or raising elevators or raising/lowering pillars when they should, though you can hear it trying to open or move? I would think that's far more severe than the Brain Boss explosion being off. Reminds me of that beta 4 bug in Ultimate Doom ep 4 with the cyberdemon gate and that beta 6.8 bug when certain stairs would not complelety raise, which are show stoppers without -noclip and decreases fun-factor of the map.
What about issues where in some maps of some wads, the switches or floor pressure points not opening certain doors/walls or raising elevators or raising/lowering pillars when they should, though you can hear it trying to open or move? I would think that's far more severe than the Brain Boss explosion being off. Reminds me of that beta 4 bug in Ultimate Doom ep 4 with the cyberdemon gate and that beta 6.8 bug when certain stairs would not complelety raise, which are show stoppers without -noclip and decreases fun-factor of the map.
I believe you are referring to the column that doesn't lower in E1M7. This bug, along with the Cacodemons getting stuck inside each other, are the two most severe bugs that currently exist in Doomsday, imo. There won't truly be a stable release until they are fixed, along with all the bugs that have been introduced with the Ringzero merge. Come to think of it, those bugs aren't on the to-do list. I certainly hope 1.9.7 won't be considered stable whenever these two bugs still exist!
As of the most recent builds, I agree that these are the most severe, as well as some performance issues with particles and dynamic lights. I wonder if the column bug is also connected to some of the random severe slowdowns or visual freezing that occurs sometimes, forcing me to save and then reload the map to make the slowdown go away. That and the particle code might be the cause.
I think those major bugs should be focused on first. Why worry about other very minor bugs first, like a sound missing or a Boss Brain explosion being off when we have these bugs that are many times more serious than that? I guess because these serious bugs are harder to fix. That would be the only logical conclusion I can come up with. What a shame.
I wonder how old this column bug is. I had a wall fail to open with a hit of a switch in Dimensions of Time - Map 06 a few months ago. I also had major slowdown a couple months before that (around October perhaps) in Plutonia II - Map 20 when activating some column steps to a small island with a blue skull key. Actually, I found a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7M60l7qCxg of that map to show you the pillars, small island, and pillars rising when the player hit a switch next to a stone stairway. It is close to the beginning of the map. When hitting the switch to raise the pillars, I got visual freezing, and when stepping on the island, walls lower to reveal many monsters and freezing for me occured too for maybe 20 seconds each time along with slowdown.
I suspect your extreme framerate issue has nothing at all to do with moving map geometry. It is much more likely that your addon configuration is to blame. Try disabling all resource pack addons (e.g., models, textures, sounds, music etc...) and then retry Plutonia II - Map 20. Let me know if you still suffer the same issue.
.I believe you are referring to the column that doesn't lower in E1M7. This bug, along with the Cacodemons getting stuck inside each other, are the two most severe bugs that currently exist in Doomsday, imo. There won't truly be a stable release until they are fixed...I certainly hope 1.9.7 won't be considered stable whenever these two bugs still exist!
I just did a complete uninstall, deletion of the frontend, and reinstall, and everything back to its original state, but when I play Plutonia II, the sky is a HOM with black and segments of the low res skspine2 texture. I'll take a screen and attach it here.
By the way, I did notice one thing Gary pointed out. I was playing Plutonia map 29 a while back (on build 364 I think), and noticed severe framerate drops about halfway through the map. This would gradually get worse until I saved and loaded my game. Upon loading, the game would run at max fps until about 5 minutes of playing - then drop in fps again. This means I had to save and load the game every 5 minutes to get decent fps. I believe Doomsday is handling one of the resources ineffectively for this to happen. Perhaps the high-res textures? I would guess that the cache is pooling, resulting in severe lag until I load the game and clear the cache.
Here is my hypothesis for the cause of this issue:
When a resource is required for render, Doomsday first checks to see whether it has been cached (and in the case of textures, present on the GPU). If it hasn't yet been cached a resource search occurs which attempts to locate whatever it is that needs to be prepared. If the search locates a resource it is prepared and is then available subsequently.
However, if the search does not yield a resource it will be searched for again and again. In the process of resolving the search, a virtual path must be composed in order to search. This virtual path is constructed from memory allocated from the Zone and is typically only a few dozen bytes or so. I suggest that it is this thrashing of the resource cache and the resulting Zone fragmentation that is the cause of the performance degradation.
This would certainly explain why I have personally never experienced this slowdown - I don't use broken addons.
Add-ons are maintained by users, like you and me, not by Deng team.
If you find an add-on doesn't work properly in these unstable builds, try looking at and fixing it yourself, instead of just complaining.
#1, I wasn't complaining. #2, I KNOW it's not maintained by the Deng team. Hence the reason it is maintained by nobody. I was simply stating a fact. If I was complaining, you'd see me express a little more emotion.
Well, maybe Vermil thinks that we are all capable of fixing addons or coding. In an ideal world maybe. You see, in this world, we can't do everything ourselves. Sure, here in the west, people have independence fetishes and go too far with it, but the truth is that everyone needs somebody at least in certain situations, whether it be emotionally, or be it physical help or other assistance of some kind. trying to do everything yourself would put you in physical danger, make it likely you would mess up on something, make you too busy, or lonely, and it simply can't happen.
Yep, the visual freezing in Plutonia II from activating a switch and touching the blue key island was either caused by an addon or something else. It is gone now. I will add some addons and see if the problem happens again.
Edit: All addons are back in with the config I had before and the problem hasn't reappeared. Maybe a deletion and recreation of the frontend fixed it.
However, keep in mind that this is a different issue than the slowdowns every 5 minutes that Lightning Hunter described.
I was in a bad mood earlier today, and apologize if I offended anyone. Sorry Vermil if I was rude. I think I'll take a break from my computer for a while, so I might not post.
Invisible Buzzers in HacX seem to be gaining the spawnceiling flag from somewhere.
This seems to be the correct behavior.
Your right.
I originally compared to ZDoom, where invisible Buzzers don't spawn on the ceiling. But after comparing to Chocolate Doom, I see they are suppose to spawn on the ceiling, like they do in Dday.
A bit more digging reveals It appears to be a mistake in the ZDoom Decorate (Dday not supporting Decorate instead uses the original Dehacked lump) lump included in the HacX wad...
EDIT: Sent a PM to Xaser about it. Dunno if he'll update the 1.2 Iwad though.
1) I've seen this a couple of times on the automap, mostly in E2M8 of Ultimate Doom. Sometimes I see these triangles (as they are supposed to represent an object), but absolutely nothing is there, as you can see in the background with the gameplay. Would it have something to do with the Lost Souls in E2M8 or something?
2) I noticed an automap rendering bug. I can reproduce this every time in Map01 of TNT. You can see a line drawn that is in a completely different room. This does not occur in Vanilla Doom.
Now, the next thing I do is use the Computer Area Map cheat to show that it is in a different room:
So, the last image lead me to another observation about the IDBEHOLDx cheat, since I used the IDBEHOLDA cheat for the computer map.
3) when I type in the IDBEHOLD part of the cheat, Doomsday no longer prints the message prompting you for which powerup you want to choose. And as I said in a previous post, you no longer cannot toggle off power-ups using the IDBEHOLDx cheat in Doomsday.
I believe you are referring to the column that doesn't lower in E1M7. This bug, along with the Cacodemons getting stuck inside each other, are the two most severe bugs that currently exist in Doomsday, imo.
Today's (out-of-cycle) build 412 addresses these issues:
I looked at the stuck column issue and found out it was due to number precision. However, as we're on the verge of releasing 1.9.7, we need to be careful with fundamental playsim changes. Thus I added the cvar "game-mobj-fracepsilon" that defaults to zero. Set it to one (1) to fix the E1M7 column. I can change the default to one after we've collectively ascertained that it doesn't cause any nasty side-effects. Let us know how it goes.
There seems to be a couple of scenarios that lead to monsters getting stuck inside each other. Floating monsters such as Cacodemons in particular were moving on the Z axis without checking where they end up; I fixed this but other monsters may still be getting stuck.
I noticed an automap rendering bug. I can reproduce this every time in Map01 of TNT. You can see a line drawn that is in a completely different room. This does not occur in Vanilla Doom.
You should find this issue has been addressed by today's build 412.
Looking very good now. I also decided to test the stuck monsters issue with this build and agree with you in that there are a few instances left in which monsters can get stuck, otherwise this issue looks to happen a lot less frequently. I still saw an Imp, Cacodemon, and Demon get stuck in E4M2, a Pain Elemental and Lost Soul in Plutonia 2 Map 15, and 3 Lost Souls stuck together in PL2 Map15 too. I have a screenshot of the last one.
I always use E4M2 and PL2 Map15 to test this issue as in E4M2 on Ultra Violence is a fast and quick way to get a large group of Cacodemons swarming you from the beginning. And PL2 Map15 because of the fact that the center of the map is inspired from E4M2.
I just want to point out that there are numerous ways in the original games for monsters to get stuck, not just because Doomsday now allows them to move over/under each other in three dimensions. To fix all the issues it would mean significant changes to the playsim logic and no doubt mod compatibility would suffer as a consequence.
Apart from that, only issue that I remember now are some bugs on the Ultimate Doom intermission screens (the Fortress of Mystery building is already shown on the intermission screen after finishing E2M5 instead of fading onto the screen after pressing the Spacebar, and there are various bloodsplats and "You Are Here" arrows missing across several buildings on the E3 intermission screen).
Other than that, I'm just about ready for a final release.
Fortress of Mystery building is already shown on the intermission screen after finishing E2M5 instead of fading onto the screen after pressing the Spacebar
This particular one is a deliberate change. It didn't make sense that the building should appear in an instant - the animation is meant to suggest that the tower is being built while the player progresses through the game.
Fortress of Mystery building is already shown on the intermission screen after finishing E2M5 instead of fading onto the screen after pressing the Spacebar
This particular one is a deliberate change. It didn't make sense that the building should appear in an instant - the animation is meant to suggest that the tower is being built while the player progresses through the game.
Hm, I always thought it was just hidden from the player until he discovers, and never thought of it as being gradually built (like with what you see with the Tower of Babel on the E2 intermission screen).
Must say, good job on fixing the flying bad guys in Doom; there were many instances where it ruined the game.
Also, I found that landing on top of a Cacodemon led to it trying to attack me non-stop, as if the game thought I was stuck inside it, rather than above or below it.
Easiest place to see this is on E4M2; walk off the edge of the ledge you start on, to land on a Cacodemon.
Heretic also has issues with flying bad guys getting stuck on things.
DOOM: E1M5 near [x:-1390, y:840] - the two columns which lower when the player crosses into sector #21; these monsters are embedded in each other and cannot separate. The original DOOM logic allowed monsters to move out of each other if they ended up in such a state.
Not a game breaking case but I expect there are many more instances of this issue.
Hexen: Raising the priority of this bug report by Vermil: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=905&start=90#p5870
MAP17 (Dark watch) in Hexen dk - north most room, some barrels are up against the bottom of a ledge
This is actually a required gameplay task in order to complete the game. In the process of which the player may pass into the void inadvertently and become trapped.
Also, the player does not scream when falling from a height.
Comments
In the new build 409:
The intermission screens no longer display the 'entering XXXX' for a second or two when you press a key, in Doom2/TNT/Plutonia/HacX.
The overwrite quick save dialog in HacX prints the yes or no line twice.
The Red Key mob in HacX appears to be broken: instead of appearing as a folder that gives you the red key (called a password by the in game messages), it instead displays as a broken computer monitor that gives you a random key when you pick it up (from all three).
Invisible Buzzers in HacX seem to be gaining the spawnceiling flag from somewhere.
1) This seems to have popped up in recent builds. Is anyone still getting weird player movement/acceleration issues? Still seems at times (mostly when I strafe) that I'm in turbo mode or something, and the movement can sometimes get really fast.
2) I see the IDBEHOLDx cheat works again, but there still is one remaining issue with it. In Doomsday, you cannot toggle off the IDBEHOLDx cheats (you were able to do so in Vanilla Doom). For example, if you had a Radiation Suit in effect, you could use IDBEHOLDR to disable the Radiation Suit. The only two IDBEHOLDx powerups that cannot be toggled off in Vanilla Doom are the Computer Area Map (IDBEHOLDA, which cannot be toggled off after enabling the cheat), and the Berserk (typing in IDBEHOLDS removes the red tint from the screen if it is there, but does not remove the extra power added to the Fist).
3) I saw some of the game ending issues were fixed, like the blank monster sprites during the Doom II cast of monsters. Was the issue of only being able to bring up the menu with Escape when a monster is in its dying animation supposed to have been fixed for build 409? I'm still getting this issue.
I believe you are referring to the column that doesn't lower in E1M7. This bug, along with the Cacodemons getting stuck inside each other, are the two most severe bugs that currently exist in Doomsday, imo. There won't truly be a stable release until they are fixed, along with all the bugs that have been introduced with the Ringzero merge. Come to think of it, those bugs aren't on the to-do list. I certainly hope 1.9.7 won't be considered stable whenever these two bugs still exist!
I think those major bugs should be focused on first. Why worry about other very minor bugs first, like a sound missing or a Boss Brain explosion being off when we have these bugs that are many times more serious than that? I guess because these serious bugs are harder to fix. That would be the only logical conclusion I can come up with. What a shame.
I wonder how old this column bug is. I had a wall fail to open with a hit of a switch in Dimensions of Time - Map 06 a few months ago. I also had major slowdown a couple months before that (around October perhaps) in Plutonia II - Map 20 when activating some column steps to a small island with a blue skull key. Actually, I found a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7M60l7qCxg of that map to show you the pillars, small island, and pillars rising when the player hit a switch next to a stone stairway. It is close to the beginning of the map. When hitting the switch to raise the pillars, I got visual freezing, and when stepping on the island, walls lower to reveal many monsters and freezing for me occured too for maybe 20 seconds each time along with slowdown.
I suspect your extreme framerate issue has nothing at all to do with moving map geometry. It is much more likely that your addon configuration is to blame. Try disabling all resource pack addons (e.g., models, textures, sounds, music etc...) and then retry Plutonia II - Map 20. Let me know if you still suffer the same issue.
Agreed.
When a resource is required for render, Doomsday first checks to see whether it has been cached (and in the case of textures, present on the GPU). If it hasn't yet been cached a resource search occurs which attempts to locate whatever it is that needs to be prepared. If the search locates a resource it is prepared and is then available subsequently.
However, if the search does not yield a resource it will be searched for again and again. In the process of resolving the search, a virtual path must be composed in order to search. This virtual path is constructed from memory allocated from the Zone and is typically only a few dozen bytes or so. I suggest that it is this thrashing of the resource cache and the resulting Zone fragmentation that is the cause of the performance degradation.
This would certainly explain why I have personally never experienced this slowdown - I don't use broken addons.
Well, we don't have much of a choice, unfortunately. Nobody seems to be maintaining the addon packs currently.
If you find an add-on doesn't work properly in these unstable builds, try looking at and fixing it yourself, instead of just complaining.
#1, I wasn't complaining. #2, I KNOW it's not maintained by the Deng team. Hence the reason it is maintained by nobody. I was simply stating a fact. If I was complaining, you'd see me express a little more emotion.
This seems to be the correct behavior.
Edit: All addons are back in with the config I had before and the problem hasn't reappeared. Maybe a deletion and recreation of the frontend fixed it.
However, keep in mind that this is a different issue than the slowdowns every 5 minutes that Lightning Hunter described.
Anyways, thanks, Dani.
Your right.
I originally compared to ZDoom, where invisible Buzzers don't spawn on the ceiling. But after comparing to Chocolate Doom, I see they are suppose to spawn on the ceiling, like they do in Dday.
A bit more digging reveals It appears to be a mistake in the ZDoom Decorate (Dday not supporting Decorate instead uses the original Dehacked lump) lump included in the HacX wad...
EDIT: Sent a PM to Xaser about it. Dunno if he'll update the 1.2 Iwad though.
EDIT2: Xaser has declined to update the 1.2 Iwad.
1) I've seen this a couple of times on the automap, mostly in E2M8 of Ultimate Doom. Sometimes I see these triangles (as they are supposed to represent an object), but absolutely nothing is there, as you can see in the background with the gameplay. Would it have something to do with the Lost Souls in E2M8 or something?
2) I noticed an automap rendering bug. I can reproduce this every time in Map01 of TNT. You can see a line drawn that is in a completely different room. This does not occur in Vanilla Doom.
Now, the next thing I do is use the Computer Area Map cheat to show that it is in a different room:
So, the last image lead me to another observation about the IDBEHOLDx cheat, since I used the IDBEHOLDA cheat for the computer map.
3) when I type in the IDBEHOLD part of the cheat, Doomsday no longer prints the message prompting you for which powerup you want to choose. And as I said in a previous post, you no longer cannot toggle off power-ups using the IDBEHOLDx cheat in Doomsday.
Looking very good now. I also decided to test the stuck monsters issue with this build and agree with you in that there are a few instances left in which monsters can get stuck, otherwise this issue looks to happen a lot less frequently. I still saw an Imp, Cacodemon, and Demon get stuck in E4M2, a Pain Elemental and Lost Soul in Plutonia 2 Map 15, and 3 Lost Souls stuck together in PL2 Map15 too. I have a screenshot of the last one.
I always use E4M2 and PL2 Map15 to test this issue as in E4M2 on Ultra Violence is a fast and quick way to get a large group of Cacodemons swarming you from the beginning. And PL2 Map15 because of the fact that the center of the map is inspired from E4M2.
Apart from that, only issue that I remember now are some bugs on the Ultimate Doom intermission screens (the Fortress of Mystery building is already shown on the intermission screen after finishing E2M5 instead of fading onto the screen after pressing the Spacebar, and there are various bloodsplats and "You Are Here" arrows missing across several buildings on the E3 intermission screen).
Other than that, I'm just about ready for a final release.
Hm, I always thought it was just hidden from the player until he discovers, and never thought of it as being gradually built (like with what you see with the Tower of Babel on the E2 intermission screen).
Also, I found that landing on top of a Cacodemon led to it trying to attack me non-stop, as if the game thought I was stuck inside it, rather than above or below it.
Easiest place to see this is on E4M2; walk off the edge of the ledge you start on, to land on a Cacodemon.
Heretic also has issues with flying bad guys getting stuck on things.
Not a game breaking case but I expect there are many more instances of this issue.
Hexen: Raising the priority of this bug report by Vermil: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=905&start=90#p5870
MAP17 (Dark watch) in Hexen dk - north most room, some barrels are up against the bottom of a ledge
This is actually a required gameplay task in order to complete the game. In the process of which the player may pass into the void inadvertently and become trapped.
Also, the player does not scream when falling from a height.