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

arstechnica.com

111–120 of 125 posts

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

#111
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but bad gradients

That may be good enough. I would like to find out.

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

#113
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It looks like you've single-handedly dismissed all the pixel art created today by saying that. Hm. I feel one has to read my comment very carelessly or interpret lot of words very unfavourably to arrive at that conclusion.

I must admit, I have misinterpreted it.

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

#114
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a bit like sticking the newest, biggest, fanciest engine you can find in the 30 year old car in your garage without any doing further modifications as part of it. Sure, the engine itself is impressive... but the car as a whole is now so unbalanced and hacked together it is worse off than before you messed with it.

Well, I certainly applaud anyone wanting to raytrace doom, but take it from this old code monkey, I've spent my entire adult life in dm-1, and a program like this one can do more harm than good. If you only develop one part of your renderer (and that's all a single exercise like raytracing is going to do for you), you're setting yourself up for artefacts down the road. I've seen it a hundred times. It's like putting…

This is a very off take and not what I was talking about at all. It can be _fun_ to do ridiculous things without purpose (and a great stress reliever) which is reason enough for a project to exist but the article paints it as being a _visual upgrade_ and an improvement to the game. It's not, for the reasons stated, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the project or development needing to be done in a way that it would be.

Separate the purpose of the project from its presentation in the article to reapply these thoughts towards the presentation in the article and I think we'd be on the same page though.

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

#115
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

How much of that was VHS masking the primitive techniques, and how much of it was you simply being little and having a young kid's imagination and ability to suspend disbelief? I ask because I've seen old movies on VHS and the special effects didn't seem that much less obvious to me than they would today. Watching Star Trek on a small 640x480 CRT TV, I could still tell the Enterprise was a model and the lizard alien…

> and the special effects didn't seem that much less obvious to me than they would today

While I understand where you come from, there is still a difference of the medium.

Eg: I have seen Blade (1998) on a VHS first, except it was a pirated copy of a pirated copy. It was a very dark, almost noir toned story, somewhat visually akin to Sin City. Years later, when I saw in a decent quality on a (still analog at that time) TV I didn't recognized it first. And again, years later on a digital TV it became just a bunch of ads for Snipes on a highly lit backdrops and ugly CGI. Somewhat similar, though not that jarring, is my story with Babylon 5. Even when it aired I could see the effects and CGI (they were pretty obvious most of the time) but now the difference of quality (and 38" vs 14") sometimes distracts from immersing to the story.

BTW only with Avatar I finally couldn't reliably distinguish where the CGI starts or ends, but it was a top notch one. I still see the "lame" CGI (especially when a fake motion blur is cranked up to 11) even on a high budget films, like all that comic book adaptations.

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

#116
While others are said enough, the best thing I learned from this article is what author also made Serious Sam ray traced mod[0] and it really looks awesome both because SS was a full 3D game and because it was made with a good light decisions in the map design which really benefit from the ray tracing.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFUwx8zLKfE

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

#117
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…

You can take the original DooM, and the super advanced ray-traced DooM, and for each pixel make an average of both, and it will look better than either of them.

At least that's what I get from this demo.

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

#118
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…

As a one time Doom modder in the mid-90s I agree the lighting feels out of place. Even most modern renderers in software don't look the same as CRTs over VGA. They're all too bright and often washed out. Tuning contrast and brightness only help so much.

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

#119
post #7
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've often felt this way about spruced-up Doom ports. Bilinear texture filtering and hi-res exposes the simplicity of the geometry and textures, it's like when TV went HD, and TV-quality sets/costumes/makeup suddenly looked "worse". It's probably still a net win if you want to blast through third-party levels. See: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/DOOM%20II%3A%20Hell%20o... I personally draw the line at colored l…

I don't think you can have high resolution without an AI+human up-scaling of the art assets. And ideally without the bill-boarding from projecting sprites on polygons. Better to have always facing sprites IMO.

Now if only the up-scaling artists could collaborate with Smooth Doom. That would be a great way to play.

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

#120
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…

Have you played Brutal Doom?
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