DarkDoomZ v1.10

This is the final release of DarkDoomZ. After about a year of no major changes, I've decided that this project is stable and complete in every meaningful way.

Highlights

• Update ZScript version to 4.5.
• Fix various minor warnings and error messages.
• Fix crash for unloaded players.
• Account for "Pulsing" sector light mode.
• Remove most sound files, use pitch-shifted click noise instead.
• Various minor tweaks to menu.
• Use player's actual camera Z for light placement.
• Add idgames template file.
• Update license year.

Barring any major bugfixes, development of DarkDoomZ is now halted and will be uploaded to /idgames. Thanks everyone for your input and feedback

Full Changelog: v1.9...v1.10

DarkDoomZ v1.9

This release consists primarily of small quality-of-life fixes.

Highlights

• Sky sectors adjustment is now a slider instead of Half / Full / None
• Enable "addons" by allowing the flashlight class to be replaced and aliased properly.
  • See DarkDoomZ Extended by Accensus for an example of this.
• DarkDoomZ options menu now cancels menu blur/dim so you can see your changes.
• Fix some dev console truncation warnings.

Hotfix v1.9a

Update ZScript version to v4.5 as I'm now using a ZScript menu class and I believe those are a newer addition. If you are using an older version of GZDoom for some reason, you may try editing the first line of zscript.zsc to match your engine version, but I make no guarantees this will work.

Hotfix v1.9b

Fix additional deprecation warnings for A_PlaySound caused by increasing ZScript version.

DarkDoomZ v1.8

This release removes the "Custom" fine-tune adjustment under advanced options, in favor of two slightly more robust options:

• Pre-Gain : Adjusts the light level up or down before applying the preset curve adjustment.
• Post-Gain : Adjusts the light level up or down after applying the preset curve adjustment.

Note these are advanced options and may not interact with the lighting modes in obvious ways, so some care and experimentation is required. If you find yourself getting inconsistent or undesired results, reset both ddz_pregain and ddz_postgain CVars to zero. Note that this release no longer uses ddz_custom so this CVar may be safely removed from your GZDoom config if desired.

Example: I was recently playing the "Darkmoon" levelset, and decided the levels were too dark and lacked sufficient contrast to look visually interesting to me. I used the "Crush" mode with a preset of "Murky" to increase the overall contrast of the light levels, and then applied a Pre-Gain of 72. This had the net effect of making some bright areas brighter while most dark areas stayed the same or got only slightly darker.

DarkDoomZ v1.7.1

Minor bugfix release. Fixed a problem where certain sky sector settings would cause constant light level refreshes. Light changing specials should work again, some users may notice minor performance improvements.

DarkDoomZ v1.7

Cleared up a backlog of feature requests and bug reports for this release, as can be seen on the v1.7 milestone tracker.

Release Notes

• Menu cleanup and rearrangement.
• New "Crush" adjustment mode. Darkens dark sectors more aggressively with an exponent curve while affecting light sectors less.
• Enable "Clamp" adjustment mode that's been soft-disabled for several versions. Simply limits the maximum light level of all sectors.
• Unclamp the ddz_custom cvar. This does not change the canonical feature set, but allows arbitrary brightening or darkening when set via console.
• Setting to enable or disable sector light effects (flicker, pulse, etc). Requires restart.
• Bugfix for flashlight that could spin the wrong way when the player turns more than 180 degrees very fast.
• Flashlight "mounting" is now relative to player viewheight, more friendly for mods that replace player classes.
• Some under-the-hood code cleanup.

DarkDoomZ v1.6

After several months of sitting on a few small changes, here's another point release. Apologies to all you folks who like to stay on stables.

Release notes:

• New Minimum Lightlevel setting allows for enforcing a hard minimum on how dark things can get. Helpful for things like Hideous Destructor's shader-based light-amp visor.
• Some small under-the-hood updates, such as the readme, credits, code styling, removal of dummy code, and prevent stacking flashlight actors when returning to hub levels.

DarkDoomZ v1.5

Another point release.

• Custom Fog is probably the biggest change, allowing custom light fading with distance. The fog type is the same one from the OpenGL options page, and will remain even if you don't load this mod. The fog density will override the lightlevel fade and any fog defined in the map (except for the colors).
• Updated base ZScript version requirement to 3.4. Keep your GZDoom updated!
• Click sounds for toggling the flashlight. I probably included way too many subtle random sound variants, but I tend to whole-ass such things.
• Re-licensed to Zlib instead of MIT.

Probably a few other minor changes here and there, but nothing important.

DarkDoomZ v1.4

Late release, sorry for the wait.

New features:

• Flashlight Type - Preset light styles. The brighter options may negatively affect performance.
  • Cheap Incandescent - Dim warm bulb with a wide beam and little spill.
  • Midrange Halogen - Moderately bright, focused beam with large spill.
  • White LED - Very bright focused beam, very wide shallow spill
  • Red Filter - Dim, nightvision-preserving light, same spread as the halogen.
• Flashlight Position - Where the light is relative to the player and how it moves.
  • Handheld - Loose springy following style, from below the viewpoint.
  • Left / Right Shoulder - Tighter following, offset to the side of the viewpoint.
  • Helmet - Very tight following, above viewpoint

The rest is mostly bugfixes and cleanup. Notably the flashlight will no longer "swing around" to your current angle when activated.

DarkDoomZ v1.3

This release adds a toggle-able flashlight to the player, for help navigating and clearing the darkness. The flashlight has two visual quality presets:

• Simple: A medium-spread beam with a moderate reach. Not very realistic but good for lower-end computers, complex maps, or or for multiplayer.
• Fancy: A narrow beam with a far reach, and a wide diffuse beam with a short reach, like a real flashlight. Higher performance impact, especially on complex maps or with multiple players.

Unlike sector lighting, the flashlight does not update in the menu when you change the quality; you must close the menu to see the difference.

Also added a small bit of code to disable sector lighting effects like strobes, flickering, and pulsing. These were often distracting and out-of-place in otherwise very dark maps. Thanks phantombeta and Marisa Kirisame!

DarkDoomZ v1.2a

This release adds a new setting for sky sectors, allowing you to apply the full darkening effect, half the effect, or disable darkening completely. This is great for maps with bright skies, and helps add a little visual relief and contrast.

Also changes in the menu now update to the map in real-time, so you don't have to back out of the settings every time you want to see the difference!

Hotfix v1.2a: Minor visual change on a menu item.