[MusicallyInspired]

The new ports coming to Steam was a nice touch! I had JUST decided to give in and buy the Classic Doom collection on Steam for a couple bucks over Quakecon. And now I have the new ports for free. Excellent. They work quite well too. And the original DOS versions are still available through each game's launch menu.

[DisgustedGrunt]

you get the green cross medkits and censored nazi imagery when playing the new version. but it appears the wads haven't been changed, playing them with a source port gives you the original stuff. Also you can play the master levels in Doom 2 with the level select.

And it's Unity, because of course.

[Lunick]

The IWADs used by the Unity port are embedded into the data themselves, the DOS versions haven't been touched.

[MusicallyInspired]

Unity is used as a frontend, for the last time. The original engine just runs inside of it.

[NightFright]

In general, I find this Unity port or whatever it is a bit overhyped. It's nothing other ports don't already do since ages, and better, I might add. Plus the fact that all user-made addons were already available before for a long time, too. Along with thousands of others. Just because they get hand-picked by Bethesda does not elevate them to a new status in any way and there's no reason to get overly excited about it, at least that's the way I see it.

[Ninety-Six]

I haven't found a source port that does the crosshair thing they're describing. If one exists by all means point me to it.

[cybdmn]

NightFright, on 04 September 2020 - 10:54 PM, said:

In general, I find this Unity port or whatever it is a bit overhyped. It's nothing other ports don't already do since ages, and better, I might add. Plus the fact that all user-made addons were already available before for a long time, too. Along with thousands of others. Just because they get hand-picked by Bethesda does not elevate them to a new status in any way and there's no reason to get overly excited about it, at least that's the way I see it.

The point is, that the unity port offer some of the stuff you can get with source ports on PC since more than two decades. So, on pc the unity ports are kind of "overhyped", but on all other platforms they are pretty unusual in what they offer.
Plus, some of the custom wads are not PWADs anymore, at least BTSX is an IWAD.

[The Battlelord]

Randomly found this Work in Progress to port musics, monsters and weapons from Painkiller to Doom 2.

Could be interesting to try new maps/projects with this: Painkiller in the Doom!

Edit: It works too, but it feels a bit out of place lol.
Anyways is nice to see normal fire, secondary fire and special fire (left click+ right click with some weapons).

[Martin Howe]

Thought running Doom and Doom2 in Doom3 was the ultimate Crowning Moment of Awesome in source porting? Think again:

https://twitter.com/...820468819288066

Boy, girl, or cacodemon

There are no words ... but I'm sure the community will find some

[NightFright]

So I have taken a quick look at this Unity port on Steam. What I found is that this port is...

good for
+ novices and casual players who just want to play Doom
+ anyone who wants to conveniently play some selected addons through an ingame downloader/launcher
+ anyone who doesn't know how to get widescreen mods working in other ports
+ those who need minor convenience features like a crosshair with autoaim indicator

not good for
- more experienced users who either want a 100% vanilla experience or lots of visual bonus features
- MIDI synth lovers (OPL, wavetable)
- modders and anyone who wants to experience the entirety of the Doom user addon arsenal
- those who want to play more id tech 1 games with the same executable (such as offered by GZDoom)

I see how this can be appreciated by players in general, but in its current form, I wouldn't be able to use this port as my primary or even only way to play classic Doom. I can live without bling-bling graphics, but if I can't have my good old MIDI music with tons of addons to choose from whenever I want, plus being able to play a round of Heretic, Hexen or Strife whenever I want, I need to say thanks but no thanks.

If you think this Unity port is the best invention since sliced bread - by all means, knock yourselves out, enjoy it. As far as I am concerned, I will keep using GZDoom. Even if Graf Zahl is a strange personality with ethically questionable attitude at times.

[X-Vector]

NightFright, on 08 September 2020 - 04:11 AM, said:

not good for
- more experienced users who either want a 100% vanilla experience or lots of visual bonus features
- MIDI synth lovers (OPL, wavetable)
- modders and anyone who wants to experience the entirety of the Doom user addon arsenal
- those who want to play more id tech 1 games with the same executable (such as offered by GZDoom)

- People who use a 4:3 resolution.

[MusicallyInspired]

Its music uses authentic SC-55 recordings so it's got that going for it.

[NightFright]

It's a plus for sure, but...

1) you can get such recordings elsewhere, too (e.g. from your website, as a matter of fact)
2) looping doesn't work (which could be fixed, I guess)
3) what about addons using their own soundtracks? You can't create SC-55 recordings for everything. MIDI has advantages, especially when it comes to preserving disk space.

[Ninety-Six]

The stock midi set it uses seems based on the sc-55 (for those with its own soundtrack) and yeah I'll admit it sounds pretty...off.

[NightFright]

I haven't heard any MIDI playback on the Unity port yet, but my bet is it's not much better than the standard Windows soundfont (which is also based on the Roland SC).

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeah, my point is though that at least people are getting an authentic experience (minus the new health kits, but even those are better than the stupid pills).

[NightFright]

It's still a better first-time experience than the poor port that came with the BFG Edition, for example. Also it seems there's some active development going on, so there are chances they will keep improving mod compatibility.

[Ninety-Six]

in defense of the BFG edition's ports, they had a much better quickswitch mapping on console than the unity ones.

Otherwise yeah it's inferior to just about everything (and that was the first time I played Doom, incidentally).

[NightFright]

My condolences. That's not how it's meant to be played. I was lucky enough to experience the original versions under DOS still, with a Pentium 60, 8 MB RAM, a VGA monitor and a Soundblaster with OPL synthesis. One should try to get as close to that setup as possible, ideally with Chocolate or Crispy Doom. After that, it doesn't really matter what you use.

[Ninety-Six]

Eh...

I had an original Doom 2 CD growing up. I also had Duke Nukem 3D. One was infinitely more playable than the other.


I suppose I should clarify: the BFG Edition was the first time I actually bothered to play Doom past the first two minutes.

[NightFright]

I tried the Doom 2 Unity port today. Downloaded TNT Evilution, launched it and... crashed to desktop.

Yeah, this thing ain't quite finished yet. It's probably good enough for the regular campaigns, but that's it. I'll stay with GZDoom/Crispy Doom.

[MusicallyInspired]

It doesn't crash on consoles. Least not in my experience.

[NightFright]

Well, I gotta add it worked the second time I tried, so it was probably some kind of glitch that couldn't be reproduced.

BTW I made a small patch for (G)ZDoom which adds most of the Unity assets (widescreen menu gfx, medpacks with green cross, changed Wolfenstein textures, edited WolfSS sound and secret found sound). Like this you can have most of the visual changes (except for the weapon wheel and autoaim crosshair, even though it could be possible with some ZScript coding) while using original (non-Unity) IWADs. If there is any interest in it, I guess I can upload it here (size is under 1MB). It would work for all Doom-based games (Doom 1+2, Plutonia, TNT).

[MusicallyInspired]

That's pretty neat!

[NightFright]

Patch is attached. You may rename the ending to .pk3 if you wish, but it's not necessary. It should load fine in GZDoom the way it is.

What's included:

Quote

1) Widescreen menu graphics
[ALL] STBAR (statusbar), DMENUPIC (BFG Edition menu background, unused)
[DOOM] CREDIT, ENDPIC, HELP1, INTERPIC, PFUB2, TITLEPIC, VICTORY2, WIMAP0, WIMAP1, WIMAP2
[DOOM2] BOSSBACK, CREDIT, HELP, INTERPIC, TITLEPIC
[PLUT/TNT] BOSSBACK, INTERPIC, TITLEPIC

2) Textures
[DOOM2] WOLF2, WOLF3, WOLF4, WOLF6, WOLF7, WOLF17 (Wolfenstein swastika replacements)

3) Sprites
[ALL] MEDIA0, PSTRA0, STIMA0 (Health packs with green cross)

4) Sounds
[ALL] DSSECRET ("Secret found" sound)
[DOOM2] DSSSSIT (Censorship for WolfSS "Schutzstaffel!" sighting sound)

If you don't want the Wolfenstein censorship, feel free to remove the following dirs and their content:
- filter\doom.id.doom2\patches
- filter\doom.id.doom2\sounds

[NightFright]

Small update for the pack. I had used graphics taken from the ZDoom forums for TNT and Plutonia before since I was unable to find the downloaded wads from the Steam release. Now the proper widescreen images are included (which are slightly better).

[NightFright]

So guys, what do you think about Microsoft buying Bethesda? Future Doom games maybe also via MS Store on PC, Doom/Wolfenstein might go XBox exclusive on console? What could this mean?

Especially PS5 fans won't be happy with this. On PC however it could mean that the Bethesda launcher finally dies, which can only be a good thing.

[jkas789]

NightFright, on 21 September 2020 - 07:52 AM, said:

So guys, what do you think about Microsoft buying Bethesda? Future Doom games maybe also via MS Store on PC, Doom/Wolfenstein might go XBox exclusive on console? What could this mean?

Especially PS5 fans won't be happy with this. On PC however it could mean that the Bethesda launcher finally dies, which can only be a good thing.

I don't like it. More and more we are starting to see console companies acquiring high profile studios, and that can't end well. I think it could lead to the scummy practices that Disney uses to "protect" their IP and the way they release their games (the famous Disney Vault). Also I can see Microsoft cannibalizing devs from Bethesda/iD/whoever to help develop their own first party games like Halo, Fable, etc.

It could be good to PC gamers but on the whole I don't think Console makers should have more power than they already do.

Also I'll take this moment to thank you for the Fullscreen Statusbar Mod. That mod is the tits.

[NightFright]

They are not going to sever the connections to Sony right away, anyway. Doom Eternal for the PS5 is going to happen. The whole announcement is strategically placed before the XBox Series X pre-orders start on Sep 22.

Glad that you like the statusbar mod. Lately it's mostly due to 3saster that the whole project became so versatile and flexible. We will still implement that system clock and Strife support, then it's probably just about getting it to work with as many pwads out there as possible.

[jkas789]

I'm more worried about the effect being a first party developer will have on Bethesda in matters of game design. As a skyrim/fallout NV/4 modder it was already difficult wrangling with the Creation Kit, never mind that the appearance of the Creation Club looms like an ugly shadow of what could become in regard to modding for ES6. Not that I think modders being able to gain money of their hard work is a bad thing. But the community has always benefitted of Bethesda being as hands off as it has always being. There has being some involvement over the years and it is clear that they have taken a lot of inspiration from mods the community has made over the years. However I fear that the current parlor like mod community will become even more closed off in regarding to sharing knowledge/innovation and assets as monetization enters the fray.

In regards to Doom my fears lie with microsoft turning it into a "life service". Fuck that. Destiny 1 & 2 were broken because of that idea.

Also very excited for future updates to all the mods you are involved with.