Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 125 posts

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#81

Post by jstummbillig »

sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

Also: Big fan of Doom

> Like a great movie, every frame was a painting - a bright blue soul sphere added a nice highlight on top of a muted brownish-green canvas.

Well, that's unreasonably nostalgic. I do agree that a lot of modern games confuse high quality art with effects, but past video games were heavily, and (to their creators) excruciatingly limited by technical feasibility, NOT by deliberate artistic choices.

The classics you remember are not what the creator imagined or wanted. It was the least painful compromise. The creators had two sticks and were hell-bent to build a space station with those. Completely unreasonable. Immensely frustrating. A masterpiece, but definitely not what the creators would have created given more options – least of all id software, which were nothing if not cutting edge.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#82

Post by benreesman »

bko wrote: post #76
benreesman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a meta-comment, but why do these downer comments fastidiously festooned in the language of plausibly-deniable faux-amicability end up at the top? The right answer to “harmless cool thing that others enjoy but I have zero interest in” is nothing. This is dope, a lot of people seem to think so. It’s not your cup of tea, fine. You’re allowed to say nothing.

I don't mind the downer comments because they provide information. Even if I think this is impressive and awesome, I don't want to see the top comment "this is impressive and awesome!" That's a low information comment. High information comments don't have to be critical but they often are. Because it's saying something in opposition to the original post. That's why you often see threads that go back and forth between…

“I love DOOM”, “Modern games focus too much on graphics”.

I’m all for spirited and informed debate, but “high information”? You mean in the Shannon sense or the compresses worse than a petabyte of zero sense?

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#83

Post by amalcon »

benreesman wrote: post #66
sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

This is a bit of a meta-comment, but why do these downer comments fastidiously festooned in the language of plausibly-deniable faux-amicability end up at the top? The right answer to “harmless cool thing that others enjoy but I have zero interest in” is nothing. This is dope, a lot of people seem to think so. It’s not your cup of tea, fine. You’re allowed to say nothing.

Grandparent seems to be making a point about the nature of art, and how small variants in the medium make a difference. It will date me a bit, but I'll provide an unrelated example:

When I was little, one of my favorite movies was The Wizard of Oz. I have a cherished memory of my grandmother loading the VHS tape, and explaining what it was like to see color on the screen for the first time.

Many years later, my then-S.O. confesses that she's never seen it, so we rent the DVD. The DVD of the Wizard of Oz looks like garbage. It's obvious where the backdrops meet the ground. The costumes barely work. The trees in the Tin Man scene are straight up hilarious. If you've ever watched the original Star Trek series on DVD or Netflix, picture whatever special effect is most obviously fake to you (for me, it's The Doomsday Machine); the whole movie looks like that.

My grandmother had one experience with the film, never having glimpsed a color motion picture before. I had a different experience, watching from a worn VHS tape whose low fidelity masked a lot of the results of the relatively primitive techniques. My then-S.O. had a third experience, as would a child watching a digital version of the film today. Just because that experience is different (and, in many ways, worse) doesn't mean that the film never should have been digitized. Likewise, grandparent's preference for the original more primitive rendering doesn't mean that the ray-tracing mod never should've been made.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#84

Post by benreesman »

amalcon wrote: post #83
benreesman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a meta-comment, but why do these downer comments fastidiously festooned in the language of plausibly-deniable faux-amicability end up at the top? The right answer to “harmless cool thing that others enjoy but I have zero interest in” is nothing. This is dope, a lot of people seem to think so. It’s not your cup of tea, fine. You’re allowed to say nothing.

Grandparent seems to be making a point about the nature of art, and how small variants in the medium make a difference. It will date me a bit, but I'll provide an unrelated example: When I was little, one of my favorite movies was The Wizard of Oz. I have a cherished memory of my grandmother loading the VHS tape, and explaining what it was like to see color on the screen for the first time. Many years later, my then-…

Put this comment above the fold and I’m a happy man: that was lucid, evocative, and thought-provoking.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#85

Post by t0suj4 »

jstummbillig wrote: post #81
sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

Also: Big fan of Doom > Like a great movie, every frame was a painting - a bright blue soul sphere added a nice highlight on top of a muted brownish-green canvas. Well, that's unreasonably nostalgic. I do agree that a lot of modern games confuse high quality art with effects, but past video games were heavily , and (to their creators) excruciatingly limited by technical feasibility, NOT by deliberate artistic choices…

It looks like you've single-handedly dismissed all the pixel art created today by saying that.

The art direction was simply chosen based on the available technology.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#86

Post by stared »

sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

I agree. I mean, I love this project as a proof of concept. It runs, it works. It is interesting to see an imp's fireball casting my shadow on a wall.

At the same time, visually it falls in an uncanny valley. As you notied, Doom is polished to its edge. Or in other words, it is in a local optimum. Any small changes (in graphics or gameplay) are unlikely to improve it.

That said, it is clearly prossible to make high-quality remakes.

I recommend a lot Black Mesa: Xen, also using Ray Traciing. It goes way beyond higher res textures, more detailed models, or just ray tracing. It bring a stunning experience! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAIJich73NY

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#87

Post by anthk »

boomlinde wrote: post #72
anthk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crispy Doom is better. It's almost as purist as Choco but it allows you to play Boom compatible IWADs well. Also, Hexen and Strife. So FreeDoom + all of the Boom compatible PWADs will work. Today most Vanilla [AKA non-Zdoom] targetings PWAD's will require a Boom/limit removing compatible engine, that's the gold standard.

Crispy Doom is not Boom compatible. Chocolate also builds for Hexen, Heretic and Strife. "Vanilla" usually doesn't imply Boom (Boom isn't even backwards compatible with Doom) but perhaps limit removing. It also seems like you are missing GP's point. "Better" is a loaded word because it implies a quality by which to measure, but Chocolate is better than Crispy for the exact purpose GP suggests it; it's more accurate i…

You can set Crispy's GFX' exactly like Choco. They are pretty close, the setup menu it's pretty much the same'

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#88

Post by anthk »

bananamerica wrote: post #48
anthk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crispy Doom is better. It's almost as purist as Choco but it allows you to play Boom compatible IWADs well. Also, Hexen and Strife. So FreeDoom + all of the Boom compatible PWADs will work. Today most Vanilla [AKA non-Zdoom] targetings PWAD's will require a Boom/limit removing compatible engine, that's the gold standard.

The projects seem to have different goals > Crispy Doom is a friendly fork of Chocolate Doom that provides a higher display resolution, removes the static limits of the Doom engine and offers further optional visual, tactical and physical enhancements while remaining entirely config file, savegame, netplay and demo compatible with the original

Yeah, but Boom-compatible it's still on the boundaries.

Most purists will be fine with Crispy. It doesn't require a PC more powerful than a 2001 one if not less. Pentium MMX-2, if any. Or ARMv5. Because of SDL.

(G)ZDoom is another level.

Re: “Can it run Doom” will never be the same, thanks to new ray-tracing mod

#90

Post by anthk »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #12
sebastos wrote: post #4

Is it okay if I occupy the following ideological niche: 1. I love original doom. 2. I am very excited about what ray-tracing can do for games. 3. I have a ton of respect for doom modders and the doubtless huge amount of effort that went into this project. 4. I hate how this looks and wouldn't play it except as a curiosity To me, the original doom was a piece of art, tuned by artists (I'll say it!) to look a certain w…

I wonder how good it would look at 320x240 and 16-bit color.

8, you mean. 16 bit allows a big pallete, near true color, but bad gradients.
Post reply on HN