Doom engine limitations?

[Ferrari]

Someone asked me a question about the doom2 limitations. He emailed me (doom2rankings) about him only being able to go as high as 35 frames per second and not any higher than it. He tried a faster card (He has a Voodoo5 5500, it would be able to surpass 35 FPS) and it will not go beyond 35 FPS. I cannot answer it due to lack of hardware but I want to ask Hurdler or Boris about this, if the Legacy engine allows it to go beyond 35 FPS like Quake or will not go any faster than the limit?

[This message has been edited by Ferrari (edited 09-05-2000).]

[Hurdler]

Doom engine is limited to 35fps. This is done for synchro. If we want to change that, there would be lots of work to do (that's what Boris told me when I asked him when starting developing OpenGL version).
Timedemo doesn't use it, and thus you can see the speed you could have if there were not that limit.

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Member of the DooM Legacy Team

[funkyass]

I thought the doom engine's max fps was 72?

[Ferrari]

I wish.
But lets just hope that the programmers are willing to change that, given time.

[Hurdler]

Well, maybe we will change that, but as for now, it's not a priority. I know hard core gamers (and especially those who play Q3A ou UT) want the highest FPS possible, but I don't know how much people would like that. One of the thing we should put on a poll (when I'll have the time)

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Member of the DooM Legacy Team

[Excalibur_Z]

It's cool that it's got a locked value, but it would be better yet if it were locked at 60fps (the most the eye can see). Doom would appear much less choppy if it were twice as smooth.

Excal_Z

[gamefreaks]

Why would anyone want to go above 35fps?
I get about 15-25Fps on my computer at 800x600, and that's smooth enough for me.
I personally can't see the point in the programmers putting time and effort into something that doesn't really make a big addition to the gameplay.

[Ferrari]

I know that 35 fps looks like it is smooth, but actually seeing 60 fps is something else, it looks MUCH smooth, like as if someone applied a 10W30 in the game. I'm sure you've played new racing arcades, they look amazingly smooth, more than Doom appears to be, thats because they run at more than 60 fps.

I agree with you, it is not a priority right now, it's smooth enough for now. But it is a good feature to add, later though. I would rather the other cool features that we've been waiting for, to come first.

[This message has been edited by Ferrari (edited 09-14-2000).]

[metzgermeister]

If you want to increase the ticrate from 35 to anything, you can try change the TICRATE define. THis affetcs other things of course (invulnerability etc.) and is not compatible with other versions in NW games.

Only an idea ...

Rob

[Jon the Frad]

If you went forward with removing the 35fps max framerate, I'd just dump backwards demo compatibility altogether, because you'd have serious trouble getting older-format demos to work. I'd say its either stick with compatible, or go ahead and legacy would be more stand-alone.