DRD Team

This is not so much a feature request as an enquiry about feature plans. I'm just wondering what your thoughts/ plans (if any) are on the following features. I've just played through Doom1 using JDoom and noticed a few OpenGL effects that aren't in GZdoom and just wondered if they were part of the bigger plan.

Glowing flats. Do you plan on making them work with slopes or is this a feature you don't want to take any further than the current implementation?

Glowing areas on textures? (Are these shaders?) In JDoom, certain textures have obviously got a definition somewhere that allows them to glow. The EXIT signs glow red, the gargoyle switch eyes glow in the dark, lights on switches glow, there's a slight glow from some computer screens, the various faces with red eyes glare at you from the dark, even the techwalls with little coloured dots are pinpoints of coloured light etc. It's not the whole texture that glows - just the bit that is supposed to be bright. Is something like that part of the long term plan for GZdoom?

Simulate Radiosity. JDoom has a feature where corners and places where walls meet floor/ceiling look darker than the main body of the floor/wall. The feature is toggled with a "Simulate Radiosity" button in the options control panel. It helps give Doom a gloomy look. Not sure if I'm completely sold on it myself - I found myself switching it on and off and I'm really not sure about it. However, I just wondered if it was part of the GZDoom plan?

Particle effects? Any plans to improve on/ add to these. I know in the past you said you might do something about the square Zdoom particles (a sprite based, prettier looking particle like Timmie did with ZdoomGL would be an improvement IMO) so I wondered if that was still something you plan on, and maybe if there were plans for any other particle based improvements?

Blended animations? Like ZDoomGL does, and JDoom also seems to (but if so, not as a default on all animations please)?

Thanks.

Enjay wrote:This is not so much a feature request as an enquiry about feature plans. I'm just wondering what your thoughts/ plans (if any) are on the following features. I've just played through Doom1 using JDoom and noticed a few OpenGL effects that aren't in GZdoom and just wondered if they were part of the bigger plan.

Glowing flats. Do you plan on making them work with slopes or is this a feature you don't want to take any further than the current implementation?

I will have to see. I have 2 choices:

1. Find a way to split the polygons so that it works with slopes
2. Use lightmaps.

Both methods have advantages and drawbacks. Vertex light doesn't work well with black fog and lightmaps don't work for translucent walls or colored fog as it is implemented at the moment. This is something I'd like to solve but it has to work.

Glowing areas on textures? (Are these shaders?) In JDoom, certain textures have obviously got a definition somewhere that allows them to glow. The EXIT signs glow red, the gargoyle switch eyes glow in the dark, lights on switches glow, there's a slight glow from some computer screens, the various faces with red eyes glare at you from the dark, even the techwalls with little coloured dots are pinpoints of coloured light etc. It's not the whole texture that glows - just the bit that is supposed to be bright.

Is something like that part of the long term plan for GZdoom?

Doomsday can assign light objects to textures. At the moment I have no plans to do that. This is somewhat easier to handle if you have a simple engine without as many features as ZDoom already has to offer.

Simulate Radiosity. JDoom has a feature where corners and places where walls meet floor/ceiling look darker than the main body of the floor/wall. The feature is toggled with a "Simulate Radiosity" button in the options control panel. It helps give Doom a gloomy look. Not sure if I'm completely sold on it myself - I found myself switching it on and off and I'm really not sure about it. However, I just wondered if it was part of the GZDoom plan?

I don't like the effect and I don't really understand the code. I tried but Doomsday's rendering code is not that compatible with me. I always had problems understanding how it works.

Particle effects? Any plans to improve on/ add to these. I know in the past you said you might do something about the square Zdoom particles (a sprite based, prettier looking particle like Timmie did with ZdoomGL would be an improvement IMO) so I wondered if that was still something you plan on, and maybe if there were plans for any other particle based improvements?

I'd like to add something better but I don't have the time to implement such a complex thing. For this I'd need help from someone with better 3D programming capabilities

Blended animations? Like ZDoomGL does, and JDoom also seems to (but if so, not as a default on all animations please)?

Timmie once said he'd port his shader code to GZDoom but I haven't heard anything about it for some time. As a default it is pure shit and that's why it isn't in.

OK, thanks for the answers. It's interesting to know where you plan to take things.