This file contains the description of what has been changed in Tartar as compared to the sources of Caverns of Darkness that Joel Murdoch has made available as COD10SRC.ZIP.
This was done because TCs for vanilla Doom and Chex do not provide a patch for Features, and it looks very out of place as a result
Again, TCs for vanilla Doom and Chex use colored images for font glyphs that dont's translate into one of the CR_... colors which makes selected menu item in Eternity options indistinguishable from other items
This was especially apparent if one used Shift when entering savegame name
By default Eternity would start a new game not from E1M1 or MAP01 but from the first changed map it detects if pwads with maps are loaded. This means that loading Tech Gone Bad would result with new games starting from E1M8, and if Sigil Compat is loaded, new games will start from E2M1 in Doom 1. Unfortunatelly, this is less useful for pwads that modify several episodes. For example Alients TC would start from E1M1 and not E2M1 as one would expect. In Tartar, when starting new Doom 1 game player can always select the desired episode. There is also an additional entry in the menu Load WAD (named so because author didn't want to add new patches to the resource wad) that will trigger default Eternity behaviour. With Doom 2, Final Doom and Chex new games always start with the first changed map when a pwad with maps is loaded.
Additional key bindings submenu for palette and screenshot-related commands (and jumping) have been added under Key Bindings/Extras.
It never worked in the first place
New compatibility options have been added under Eternity Options to control:
- MBF "mushroom explosion" compatibility
- Checking every special line player crosses, including if player is blocked from moving by a wall or other object
- SMMU colored lighting
- Experimental support for rendering of textures with tall patches
Option menus and Save/Load Game menus are more spacious and allow character glyphs of up to 10 pixes in height to be output without getting cut by screen borders. Because of this some of the empty space that was used for menu formatting is now gone and Compatibility menu is split into two screens. Players can go into the second screen via "MORE..." entry at the bottom of the first one.
Author's goal with this change was primarily to support Ancient Aliens fonts.
Menu background is using the same texture MBF and subsequent versions of Eternity Engine used. In case when Caverns of Darkness are loaded or Tartar is in Eternity TC mode, the background used in SMMU and the version of Eternity Engine Tartar is based on will be used as before.
Options to assign Quick save and Quick load keys have been restored in the Options menu under Key Bindings/Environment and KEYS.CSC shipped with all versions of Tartar has been updated to include default key assignment for them, making quick save and quick load features operate in Tartar for all players out of the box.
ALLEGRO.H in Tartar comes from the version of Allegro found in MBF 2.0.4, and Tartar binaries are linked with liballegro produced from the sources that the author of MBF 2.0.4 has shared. System dependent sound code has been replaced with that from MBF 2.0.4. This single change was the main driver of the effort by the author, as he found previously available build of Cavens of Darkness to be somewhat unstable when it came to sound and music on a modern "Frankenstein" gaming system in native DOS.
For those curious, target system for Tartar development was eqipped with a Yamaha YMF744B-R based PCI sound card and an X3MB MIDI synthesizer connector to the MPU-401 port of the said card. It was intended to be used in Windows 98 with VXD drivers by Yamaha and in DOS with DSDMA utility.
Please refer to MBF 2.0.4 changelog for the details on Allegro changes. Tartar source code does not include modified Allegro sources.
Following the "change in policy" from MBF 2.0.4 sound code inclusion it is no longer possible to select sound card in Tartar options menu. Instead player should use a separate SETUP.EXE configuration utility. This utility is taken as is from MBF 2.0.4 in Tartar distribution and produces SETUP.CFG file (similar to ALLEGRO.CFG file that original ASETUP.EXE from Allegro library produced).
With MBF 2.0.4 lowlevel sound routines inclusion, sound effects are always cached at the start of the game. Option to control this is now gone.
Sound effects cache is refreshed every time new wad is added or set of wads is added to register all newly added sounds
When recoverable issues are encountered during MUS file conversion to MIDI, instead of stopping the music for level, attempt to go on with the conversion
Sound effect lumps in WAD format are read and both 8-bit and 16-bit samples are supported. Paired with Allegro's support of 16-bit cards this allows for much clearer sounding sound effects in mods, such as for example Doom Sound Bulb. Tested with DOSBox SoundBlaster 16 emulation and SB Audigy VxD in Windows 9x.
Low-level system video routines have been replaced by those developed by Gerwin for MBF 2.0.4. The new routines use VESA API calls instead of Allegro library functions and have improved video cards compatibility.
For the list of cards tested with MBF 2.0.4 please consult the included changelog for that port, however it should be noted that Tartar's author was able to get high resolution modes work with the embedded video card by Intel that he had on the target system, which did not work with the DOS source ports he had previously tried.
It is no longer possible to directly select video mode in the options menu. Instead following MBF 2.0.4 example, video mode selection is done based on the combination of options that player sets in options menu. These options are described in this section, and there is also a separate section of this file with the list option combinations recommended for some specific cases.
All C routines that had high resolution mode supported (i.e. 640x400 resolution in addition to 320x200) have been updated to support any resolution that is a power of 2 multiple of 320x200. In practical terms this means 1280x800 is now supported, but in theory these functions could work with e.g. 2560x1600 as well.
This is not true for Assembler functions, which have only been provided for the newly introduced 1280x800 renderer resolution. So adding new hi-res modes is sadly not just a matter of extending available configuration options.
Player can choose to render to screen buffer of the following dimensions:
- 320x200 rendered image will be output in 320x200 resolution
- 640x400 rendered image will be output into 640x400 resolution if supported otherwise will be output into 640x480 resolution with black bars on top and bottom
- 1280x800 rendered image will be output into 1280x1024 resolution with black bars on top and bottom
The following CVAR values are supported for selecting resolution v_hires: 0, 1, 2. The same can be setup with hires configuration file option.
If activated the following scaling will be performed:
- 320x200 rendered image will be scaled to 640x400 and output into 640x400 resolution if supported otherwise will be output into 640x480 resolution with black bars on top and bottom
- 640x400 rendered image will be scaled to 1280x800 and output into 1280x1024 resolution with black bars on top and bottom
- 1280x800 rendered image will not be scaled and still be output into 1280x1024 resolution with black bars on top and bottom
Game resolution will be selected accordingly. No interpolation or filtering is performed while scaling; each pixel is simply drawn as 2x2 block of the same color.
Scaling of screen buffer is done in RAM, after which scaled screen buffer contents are sent into video card's memory. This means that while less CPU intensive, scaling will still require at least one larger size screen buffer, and thus more memory than with scaling off at the same renderer resolution.
CVAR to enable/disable scaling is v_scale_hi, scale_to_hires is the corresponding option in the configuration file.
If activated without scaling to higher resolution:
- 320x200 rendered image will not be changed
- 640x400 rendered image will not be changed if video card supports 640x400 resolution, otherwise it will be stretched and output into 640x480 without black bars on top and bottom
- 1280x800 rendered image will be stretched to 1280x960, and output into 1280x1024 with black bars on top and bottom, bars being narrower than for an unstreteched 1280x800 image
No interpolation or filtering is performed while stretching. In fact stretching is performed by outputting some of the screen buffer lines twice. I.e. without scaling to higher resolution on some of the lines pixels will be drawn as 1x2 blocks of the same color. With scaling to higher resolution, on the same lines pixels will be drawn as 2x3 blocks of the same colors, rather then 2x2 blocks as on other lines.
CVAR controlling this is v_scale_aspect, and this can be also set with scale_aspect option of the configuration file.
Saving a screenshot will result in the same image as being output to the screen, as screenshot functions will perform the same scaling as screen output functions do.
As in MBF 2.0.4, the option to enable page flipping via VESA API call in low-level vieo routines has been added. CVAR v_page_flip and configuration file option page_flip can be used to control it.
Waiting for retrace (vsync) will be attempted in page flipped modes only, as this is the behaviour of the incorporated MBF 2.0.4 low level video routines.
Unlike Allegro counterparts, MBF 2.0.4 low level video routines do not have generic purpose blitting functions, so rendring sprites at arbitrary moment in game life cycle is no longer possible. One such case was the flashing disk/CD-ROM icon, and as it's no longer supported, option is gone for it from the menu.
Low-level video routines from MBF 2.0.4 include code for FPS measurement. Unike MBF 2.0.4, Tartar uses SMMU HUD widget to render FPS values, so even if option is active, FPS counter will only be visible in game and during demos, but not in title screen or menus. One can use v_show_fps CVAR and show_fps configuration file option to switch FPS output on or off.
If FPS counter is on, Tartar will additionally display current video settings (including actual mode that was configured) after they have been changed, or for a few seconds after new level was started or a saved game was loaded.
On one hand author has never been able to get them working, on the other these were referring to the benchmark scores tied to a certain set of video modes which no longer made sense with the changes described above. This change has only removed timed demos from Options menu. Running with command line arguments or from Features menu should still be possible.
- -nolfb avoid using LFB modes with VESA routines
- -nopm avoid using PM VESA functions
- -safe try the most compatible settings for video card also (specific to Tartar) avoid using paging
- -asmp6 choose P6-specific assembler optimized code for copying memory blocks regardless of the detected CPU family
Configuration file option stretchsky has been added to store it.
New translucency mode has been added that does not use TRANMAP file. Instead it renders either odd or even pixel of sprites and textures, depending on the number of line being drawn. This results in 50% translucency effect when used with intended equipment, e.g. a CRT VGA display at high enough resolution (1280x1024 would do).
Photo demonstrating the resulting effect
Column and span rendering functions have been provided as well as functions for rendering sprites with translated colors and for particles.
One limitation is that translucency is not "additive", which means that translucent objects act as opaque for other translucent objects and will block them. Also, in addition to applying this to all objects in game for which general transparency applies, code applies this to player sprites (arms) when in invisible state. Fuzz-ed objects like Specter or other players with Invisibility powerup are rendered with the slightly modified fuzz effect.
comparison of no transparency, tranmap-based general transparency
and "checkered" transparency
To use this mode first enable general translucency in the option menus, and then either set r_fauxtrans CVAR or change faux_translucency option in the configuration file.
Please note that this feature is not compiled in the reselase versions of Tartar by default.
When enabled this which causes experimental ("no feature") code for rendering Boom-style (i.e. line type 242) deep water surface as translucent to be included. In fact this code results in nothing resembling translucent water surface even if it is enabled explicitly with r_watertrans CVAR or water_translucency option in the configuration file, both of which are off by default. This will also only work if general translucency is enabled in options.
The TRANWATER preprocessor define is not set for compiling Tartar, since otherwise this enables broken, "no feature" code.
When "checkered" translucency is enabled with r_fauxtrans CVAR, translucency map file (TRANMAP) is neither generated nor used at all.
Translucency map file (TRANMAP) is no longer cached between runs and is instead generated using the palette of currently loaded WADs or upon on the fly palette switch; it is still saved to disk every time e.g for the purpose of being used as a lump
-safe command line argument prevents page flipping from being used regardless of the setting in Video Options; one use case for this is when running in DOSBox with 1280x1024 resolution selected
Palettes from currently loaded WADs can be cycled through on the fly with new bindable pal_next, pal_prev console commands. PLAYPAL, COLORMAP (and TRANMAP in case translucency is enabled) lumps are cycled in sync while cycling through palettes.
If players increase screen size past "fullscreen" (i.e. screen size with BOOM-style HUD appearing instead of status bar) newly implemented "extended" screen size is selected for which Tartar will attempt to take advantage of all available screen space to show both "fullscreen" player view and status bar; HUD will not be displayed in this screen size. See below examples of output with different display sizes in 1280x1024 resultion.
"Full", "extended" and "normal" screen sizes (left to right)
Same with 4x3 aspect ratio switched on in Video Options
Fuzz effect is more "blocky" in higher resolutions, making Specters and invisible other players look less "airy" and also hopefully reducing noticeable artifacts and "moire" with the effect itself.
More on the issues with fuzz effect as ID have implemented it can probably be found n the apocryphical "Why I left Doom, Lee Killough May 1999.htm", but alas author does not have a copy of that.
Strict validation of patches (graphics) boundaries is gone, in particular for vertical extents. This was done to more easily handle rendering outside of the conventional game view rectangle that is a multiple of 320x200 after the new more extensive screen size was introduced, that places status bar below that rectangle.
If extents of the patch (grpahics) to be rendered fall outside of screen, only the visible part will be output. This in particular allows for rendering of wide-screen friendly assets from more modern WAD-s.
No error message spamming occurs in for boundaries checking when rendering patches (graphics).
Normally Doom graphics format, as handled by vanilla Doom and Boom by default, has an image height limitation of 255. Subseqently released source ports like PrBoom++ include support of the technique known as "tall paches" that allows to remove the height limitation, while keeping the image binary format.
While Tartar retains the "classic" patches drawing routines it has inherited from Eternity Engine version it is based on, the "tall patches" technique support has been added for the two specific cases below:
- Drawing of game actor graphics (monsters, pick ups and other assets in the map) and middle textures of 2-sided walls (these are often "grills" or "vines" and the like) are always rendered with "tall" format support and thus images with source height of more than 255 pixels are output.
- For top and bottom textures as well as for middle textures of 1-sided walls (which are normally your brick, mortar, wood, etc) rendering with "tall" format support can be enabled with comp_talltex compatibility CVAR, which can be set through "Workaround for tall textures" option under Eternity Options menu or via configuration file property with the same name. It is recommended that Tartar is restarted after this option is toggled.
Please note that this feature is not compiled in the reselase versions of Tartar by default.
Tartar introduces a set of debugging aids to help narrow down certain glitch or crash to a particular feature of the scene being rendered. When compiled with NORENDER preprocessor define, Tartar gets a -norender command line argument that activates a range of CVAR-s and debugcolumn CCMD.
- r_norender1 - switches sky rendering on or off
- r_norender2 [number] - when number is set to a non-negative value
only the screen column with that number
will be shown (numbering starts with 0) - r_norender3 - switches sprites rendering on or off
- r_norender4 - no action
- r_norender5 - switches top textures rendering
- r_norender6 - switches mid textures rendering
- r_norender7 - switches bottom textures rendering
- r_norender8 - switches masked textures rendering
- r_norender9 - switches floor and ceiling rendering
- r_norender0 - switches all of the above on/off at once
- debugcolumn - dumps information on visplanes and clipping
for a single particular screen column
set with r_norender2; needs -debugfile
It is advised that KEYS.CSC is used to assign keys for activatning the various rendering aids and triggering column rendering dump.
Tartar only supports video modes with 8 bits per pixel, that is ones capable of displaying 256 colors at once.
Player has authentic retro or otherwise performance sensitive hardware, or interest in classic vanilla/BOOM/MBF experience.
- Renderer resolution - 320x200
- Scale to higher resolution - No
- Aspect ratio to scale to - Original
320x200 resolution will be configured by Tartar.
Player has access to slightly more powerful hardware including a videocard that supports 640x400 and preferrably a CRT display.
- Renderer resoltion - 640x400
- Scale to higher resolution - No
- Aspect ratio to scale to - Original
640x400 resolution will be configured by Tartar.
Player has access to slightly more powerful hardware but but their videocard only supports 640x480 and not 640x400.
- Renderer resoltion - 640x400
- Scale to higher resolution - No
- Aspect ratio to scale to - 4:3
640x480 resolution will be configured by Tartar.
Player has a 1280x1024 LCD display with 5:4 aspect ratio and hadrware that is fast enough and has enough memory to handle higher resolution.
- Renderer resoltion - 1280x800
- Scale to higher resolution - No
- Aspect ratio to scale to - 4:3
1280x1024 resolution will be configured by Tartar.
Player has a 1280x1024 LCD display with 5:4 aspect ratio, hadrware that is fast enought and has enough memory to handle higher resolution, and an appreciation for sprites looking the same they would look in a graphical editor had they loaded them.
- Renderer resoltion - 1280x800
- Scale to higher resolution - No
- Aspect ratio to scale to - Original
1280x1024 resolution will be configured by Tartar.
Configuration file option for it is smooth_turning, same name as for CVAR.
Mouse turning smoothing takes 4 samples into account for extra smooth turning when smooth turning is activated in options menu. Previously 2 samples were used.
Historically Eternity had been suffering from "jerky" mouse movement, as sharp turns by the player could easily result in 360 (or more) degree turns in game. Rather than fixing this at the source as SoM has done in late 2008, Tartar author has introduced clamping of exessive mouse readings to prevent unexpected turning behavior. This change is specific to Tartar and makes mouse turns in Tartar "feel" different from other ports. There is no configuration option or CVAR to disable it.
SMMU and Eternity automaticall load the resource WAD file that contains sprites, patches and sounds necessary for the source port to work. The WAD is looked for using the name of the executable of the port. So, provided ETERNITY.EXE is run, the name of the WAD file to load would be ETERNITY.WAD, but if player renames ETERNITY.EXE to FOOBAR.EXE, the name of the WAD file would be FOOBAR.WAD. Tartar always looks for WAD file named ETERNITY.WAD.
This allows players to, for example, rename TARTAR.EXE to DOOM.EXE and use a front end like DOOM-IT to load maps and mods with it.
Tartar looks for files necessary for it to run in the directory where .EXE sits, not in the directory that was current when the .EXE was run. I.e. imagine this directory structure:
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\
...
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\DOOM2.WAD
...
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\TARTAR.CFG
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\TARTAR.EXE
If player runs the game from C:\GAMES\DOOM2 using command TARTAR\TARTAR.EXE Tartar will load TARTAR.CFG and other files it needs from C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR, and not C:\GAMES\DOOM2. The following files will be picked up from that directory:
- TARTAR.CFG
- ETERNITY.WAD
- SETUP.CFG
- KEYS.CSC
- MBF_D2GM.IBK
This does not in any way change the way WADS (iwads, or pwads) and DEH/BEX patches are looked for or loaded.
That startup code has been merged with the one from MBF 2.0.4 probably means more stable behaviour when run under Windows NT family OS. Author has not tested this however.
Scaling of timer tics can still be controlled with i_gamespeed CVAR and configuration option realtic_clock_rate. However after MBF 2.0.4 system code has moved in, it is no longer updated in realtime, and requires a restart of the game to be picked up.
Eternity performs video and audio update every game loop, regardless of whether new events to process are available, or next game tic has started as per system timer. Tartar's author is not aware of the rationale for this, but annoyed with the absurdly high frame rates in lower sresolution, has introduced new CVAR i_ticwait and configuration option update_after_tic, that limit the updates only to situations, when new events are available or new tick has been registered by the system timer (the latter is to keep menus and game UI running even when there's no game or demo happenning).
Author's preference is to run with the CVAR set to on, and little testing that has been carried out has not shown any effect on the gameplay, aside from the desired capping of FPS to 35 + ~35/2 (which is around 50 fps while playing), however to maintain compatibilty with Eternity both CVAR and configuration option are off by default.
Keypress processing has been reorganized to allow bindable console commands in most of the game screens, including title screen, intermission and automap. This may cause actions to trigger from keypresses in game screens where players would not expect this at all, so author tried his best to ensure players experiece does not suffer and, for example, cheats work as expected.
Additionally, console when opened is displayed on top of all other widgets including Menus, and players cannot interact with other widgets than console while it is on.
FreeDOOM, FreeDM, The People's Doom and HacX IWAD names have been added to the list of IWAD filenames Tartar searches for during startup.
Overlay HUD is initialized earlier and operates on more game screens; only relevant widgets will be shown, e.g. no crosshairs in title or intermission screens, but screen resolution details, for example, will be visible there.
BOOM-style HUD variant is no longer toggled by pressing + when already at max screen size; players can still use F5 key for that.
Screenshot taking changes is no longer a "game action" (one example of a game action is finishing a level) and bindable screenshot CCMD has been added for taking screenshots, as well as Menu option to assign a key to it.
Screenshot filename is output in console every time a screenshot is saved and no sound is produced anymore.
New -tape command line argument allows to specify a single WAD to be loaded before all other WAD-s (before both PWAD-s and even the IWAD) in such way that its lumps are "immutable" and cannot be ovrridden by lumps with the same names from subsequently loaded WAD-s.
This can be used to patch a certain lump with some specific contents regardless of WAD-s load order and without influencing lump numbering, the most obvious use case being including updates to FraggleScript or mapinfo by patching map marker lumps.
Additionally a helper WAD will be loaded automatically (unless neiter -tape nor -noload command line argument is provided on startup) if case when in the TAPE directory side by side with TARTAR.EXE a WAD file is found with the same name as one of the PWAD-s Tartar has on the list of WAD-s to load. Only one helper WAD will be loaded, meaning that if two or more PWAD-s on the list to load have matching helper WAD-s in TAPE directory, the first PWAD on the list gets its helper.
Take for example this directory layout
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\DOOM2.WAD
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\NERVE.WAD
...
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\TARTAR.EXE
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\ETERNITY.WAD
...
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\TAPE
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\TAPE\NERVE.WAD
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\TAPE\LONGTREK.WAD
Then starting Tartar with this command from C:\GAMES\DOOM2 TARTAR\TARTAR.EXE -file NERVE.WAD
will result in TARTAR\TAPE\NERVE.WAD being loaded before DOOM2.WAD, ETERNITY.WAD and NERVE.WAD.
See EXTRAS for further notes on usage and information about included sample helper WAD-s.
Tartar will automatically add WAD-s, DEH-s and BEX-s found in FIXES directory to the list of files to load, putting them straight after the IWAD on the list of files to load. This is a convenient way to include into file load lists popular fix packs without specifying them manually with -file command line argument.
If inside the FIXES directory a directory exists that matches the name of the IWAD (e.g. FIXES\DOOM, FIXES\DOOM2 or FIXES\TNT) files found in that directory will also be added to the list of files to load.
For example, let's consider this directory layout
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\DOOM2.WAD
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\NERVE.WAD
...
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\TARTAR.EXE
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\ETERNITY.WAD
...
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\FIXES\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\FIXES\Doom_Sound_Bulb.wad
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\FIXES\DOOM\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\FIXES\DOOM\D1SPFX20.WAD
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\FIXES\DOOM2\
C:\GAMES\DOOM2\TARTAR\FIXES\DOOM2\D2SPFX20.WAD
Then starting Tartar with this command from C:\GAMES\DOOM2 TARTAR\TARTAR.EXE -file NERVE.WAD
will have D2SPFX20.WAD and Doom_Sound_Bulb.wad added to list of WAD-s to load after DOOM2.wad and before ETERNITY.WAD and NERVE.WAD.
Players can control this behaviour with -noload command line argument which prevent any fixes from being loaded and -fixes command line argument which allows to specify a directory in which to look for fix packs instead of the default FIXES directory.
Build has been switched to RELEASE configuration from DEBUG and extra checks around array sizes and memory management are no longer compiled in by default. If original Eternity Engine authors are to be believed this is detrimental for one's sanity, but how does one find out if not by trying?
Starting the game with -devparm no longer locks it up at an early stage and allows game to run despite severe error detected (up until the stage where it eventually crashes) .
-noload argument is respected Tartar code and will cause it to avoid loading any PWAD aside from the ones provided explicitly by the player and ETERNITY.WAD E.g. none of the fixes, helper or extra WADs will be loaded and none of the WAD and DEH files specified in the configuration file will be loaded either.
-file command line argument in Tartar supports loading DeHackEd patches in DEH or BEX format in addition to WAD-s or individual lumps. Dehacked patch will be loaded and applied as per the order it is specified among other files to load with -file argument. Loading of DEH or BEX patches with -deh command line argument also works.
Tartar can load node, segs and vertex information in extended format as described in ZDoom wiki. Only uncompressed node data is supported.
To accomodate for increased number of nodes supported by the extended format BSP node table has been extended to 32 bits per node id for all maps. Segs offset and angle computation has been added to map data parsing routine. The formulas for that computation are somewhat empiric, and may need further work.
Additionally, since support of the format allows Tartar to load maps of recently released WAD-s like Sunlust, Ancient Alients, Eviternity or Jumpwad, workarounds have been provided for visual glitches and crashes, caused by Tartar's arithmentic functions not being exatcly suitable for very tall objects found on maps of these WAD-s.
At the time of writing this is still an experimental feature.
CHEX.WAD is now among the names of the IWADs that Tartar supports. Moreover it will be loaded even if a PWAD version is provided. In addition to loading CHEX.WAD without requiring any Doom IWAD, the following compatibility changes have been made in Tartar as per the recommendation in readme file of Simon Howard's DEH patch
- Game will stop after level 5
- Monsters will not produce drops on death
- No episode selection menu is presented at the start of the game
- Level selection cheat codes will always take player to an Episode 1 level, regardless of the episode number typed
It is recommended that CHEX.DEH by Simon Howard is loaded with CHEX.WAD, for better experience, as Tartar does not have any string or monster modifications for Chex internally.
Implementation-wise Chex Quest is treated as a mission pack to registered and retail versions of the game.
As Tartar is based on the original COD engine source code there's little surprise it can load the TC itself. Unlike COD.EXE however Tartar needs to be explicitly told to load COD.WAD and CODLEV.WAD, e.g. like this:
TARTAR.EXE -file COD.WAD CODLEV.WAD
If both wads named COD.WAD and CODLEV.WAD are found on the list of wads to load, Tartar will not load ETERNITY.WAD and instead load COD.WAD as resource wad in its place. It will also activate support for Caverns-related features, including special handling of line types 274 and 275 which is different from that in SMMU or Eternity.
Implementation-wise Caverns of Darkness is treated as a mission pack to commercial version of the game.
Additionally placing of actors with doomednum 5003 on maps has been reenabled when Caverns of Darkness are detected and will not result in an SMMU camera being placed in their place intead.
Tartar source code retains features that were originally planned for the cancelled TC from Eternity 2.39 developer beta 5 it is based on. These include:
- enabling Eternity mode if special lump is found in a loaded WAD
- functioning Grenade Launcher weapon and ammo pickups for it
- sphere pickup giving complete invisibility bonus to the player
- destructable tree obstacle objects
- medieval themed props and decorations
- dwarf spellcaster helper character
- dwarf alter ego and golem summonned characters code
- clerics, Minotaur, flying Mastermind and Cyberdemon guard monster code
- static human guard, dwarf and Cyberdemon guard actors for dialog scenes
- projectiles and effects for spells and magic attacks
- fully operational dialog engine
- "declarative" terrain and environment effects (e.g. spashes from water or fog in swampy areas)
Additionally the following features have been restored in Tartar:
- medieval themed set of sound effects for the TC is now recognized
- Eternity ambient sound library (commented out by Murdoch) has been restored and made coexist with COD ambinet sounds
- line types 274 and 275 have been restored to beahve as expected in SMMU or Eternity, and only exhibit COD behavior if COD mission pack is detected by Tartar
- CoD actors would only be spawned when CoD is loaded with certain actors replacing Eternity TC ones in case the same Doomednum is used for both
Message is output to console when Eternity TC Mode is activated.
- Commander Keen suffering sounds have been restored (were cut by Murdoch) and will be played regardless of game mode or mission pack
- Original Doom Chaingunner attack sound has been restored; the "special" chaingun sound is only used for the attack in Eternity TC mode or with Caverns of Darkness loaded
- SMMU colored lightning is off by default with a menu option under Eternity Options and new CVAR (comp_clighting) to enable it. When on it was producing rendering artifacts with more complex MBF-compatible maps.
- Eternity TC actors would now be spawned only while in Eternity TC mode or with Caverns of Darkness loaded
- MBF mushroom effect behaviour is supported by default. Players can switch to how SMMU and early Eternity Engine (mis-)behaved via a menu option under Eternity Options or via comp_mushroom configuration option.
In case there's MAP33, game will load it and subsequent maps after MAP 30 is completed. Doom 2 cast of characters will be displayed after the final map in the WAD is completed by the player. This can be switched off with detect_finallevel configuration file parameter.
In case Doom 2 PWAD does not replace all of the maps - for example a PWAD that replaces MAP01 - MAP11 and ends with a text screen that it replaces with DeHackEd to explain that player's mission has been acomplished. In this scenario Tartar will display Doom2 cast of characters screen after that and will not load MAP12 automatically. This can be switched off with detect_finallevel configuration file parameter.
- Texture definition checks are more relaxed and Tartar would log the errors it detects rather than quit immediately; related error messages are now also more friendly.
- Upon encountering textures with missing patches or sprites with no rotations when loading wads Tartar would no longer immediately quit or crash.
- Non-power-of-2 wide texutes are now fully loaded and displayed.
- If missing patches are referenced from texture definition no error message is recorded and transparent columns are produced instead.
- If a missing texture is referenced in a map, Tartar will still load that map will and use default texture (texnum 1) in place of it or any other unknown textures it encounters
- If a missing flat is referenced in a map, or flat '-' is referenced, Tartar will still load that map and use first flat (flat index 0) in place of it
If expected demo lump is missing or is of zero size Tartar will not attempt playing it, rather than going into indetermined state.
New command line argument -nodemo has been added for the player to suppress demo playback if it's found to be choppy or jittery for particular WADs.
Maps with more that 32k sides or lines no longer crash the game (e.g. Eviternity Dehydration or Imperator can be loaded).
When loading a map that Tartar would not be able to handle it drops to console showing an error message rather than crashing.
Similarly, when saved game is loaded that needs WAD files that are not loaded Tartar will not go into undetermined state but will rather drop to console showing an error message.
MBF, SMMU and Eternity Engine behaviour was that in case when a wall or another object prevented player from moving, line specials they may have nevertheless had crossed wouldn't have beeen checked. An example of this can be found at the exit of Strain MAP07, where vanilla Doom 2 allows the player to exit, while MBF does not.
Tartar introduces an experimental workaround for this, which is enabled by default and can be controlled with comp_everyline configuration file property and via Eternity Options menu. When workaround is on Tartar will check each and every line accessible to the player for special effect trigger, not stopping at the first triggered line, nor aborting when a wall or another object is detected that blocks player from moving.
- WADs with SS_/FF_START but no corresponding S_/F_START lumps are supported.
- Maps with empty REJECT lumps no longer crash the game.
- Tartar can load PWAD-s as IWAD-s. For example CHEX.WAD will be loaded. as IWAD regardless whether it is a PWAD or IWAD version and when players specify an IWAD of their choice with -iwad command line argument Tartar will not enforce that it is in fact a PWAD.
- In case when map info lump dictates Tartar to use a certain intermission background image, but lump for that image is not present the game will display the menus background on end of map tally screen instead of crashing.
Enemies menu in Tartar has option to enable re-coloring of blood splats into other colors from the default red. Color can be set to blue, yellow or green. This will affect all blood splats and particle blood, but not gore, corpses, decorations or wall textures. Screen fading into red when player is in pain is also not affected by this option.
Additionally "intelligent" mode is available (Auto in options) that:
- changes all blood color to green in Chex, except player bleed yellow
- re-colors Doom Barons and Knights blood color to green
- re-colors Doom Cacodemons blood color to blue
- Doom players bleed yellow when invincible
- re-colors Doom blood color to green for [Roaches] (https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/combos/ludicrous)
- retains default color for all other splats (which is red, unless replaced by PWADs)
CVAR mon_bloodcolor controls blood re-coloring, values are 0-4, 0 corresponds to no re-coloring, 4 - to auto (intelligent mode). The configuration file option is bloodcolor.
- BEX-style string definitions without a space before equals sign are correctly processed
- Mnemonically-specified flags (and flags2) for Things (bits and bits2 attributes to be exact) in DEH patches are now applied
- DEH attributes parsing for Things uses non-case-sensitive comparison and tolerates both presense of spaces and absence of spaces before equals sign
- Encountering unknown codepointer name in DEH file no longer causes a crash
- In TEXT substitution blocks CR (Carriage Return) character (code 13) is ignored and is not taken into account when couting number of characters in the "from" section of substitution. The character is handled normally (i.e. as any other character) in the "to" section of substitution.
- Encountering empty DEHACKED lump in a WAD file will no longer move the game into an undetermined state
- Automap shows correct level time, not an arbitrary value like before
- Arms numbers panel in status bar use correct background
- Automap no longer displays spaghetti monster for maps with "bigger than normal" extents due to scaling boundaries not computed correctly.
- Very far objects no longer "bleed" into player's view due to atan computation overflows.
- Automap shows correct level name, for maps entered entered via MAP CCMD
- Finishing original Doom E1M8 no longer leaves the game with reddish tinted screen
WADs found in FILTERS directory will be loaded automatically upon startup with all but PLAYPAL, COLORMAP and TRANMAP stripped from them. These have special treatment and will not override the lumps from WADs players may have loaded with -file command line argument, but will be available for on the fly palette cycling with pal_next.
Use pal_list console command to print the list of loaded palette WADs (both player-specified and extras).
PLAYPAL from GINZA.WAD and WALDEN.WAD cycled while in a HacX map
If both SELFIE.WAD and SELFIE.DEH from Instadoom are found side by side with TARTAR.EXE, players are given selfie stick and can switch to it for selfie-making with bindable selfie CCMD.
All other weapons, including plasma gun and BFG, retain their normal behaviour. Press Fire to take selfies with the stick out; taking selfie makes 3 screenshot and does not require ammo; to remove the stick just switch to any other weapon.
Doom 2 intermission maps by @olyacim are supported, however as the author is still working on the version with patch-based graphics (as opposed to the PNG-based versions for GZDoom he has released) the support was only tested with experimental modified WAD-s @olyacim has kindly shared.
If one of the intermission maps WAD-s is found side by side with TARTAR.EXE and no PWAD-s are loaded, intermission screens will use images by @olyacim with blood splats and "you are here" arrow. Secert maps use standard DOOM2 INTERPIC as background for intermission screens and background animations are not implemented.
If any PWAD is loaded standard INTERPIC is used for all maps; newly introduced -wimaps command line switch can be used to force custom intermissions to be used even with PWAD-s. Running Tartar with -noload command line argument will prevent loading of custom intermisson map WAD-s.
4 out of 5 levels of DOOM II 2nd "episode" conquered
The following PWAD-s will be auto-loaded if found by Tartar:
- INTMAPD2.WAD - used with DOOM2.WAD IWAD; is also a dependency for
the helper WAD for LONGTREK (A Long Trek Back Home)
included with Tartar distribution. - INTMAPEV.WAD - used with TNT.WAD IWAD
- INTMAPPL.WAD - used with PLUTONIA.WAD IWAD
- INTMAPNR.WAD - auto-loaded but not used on its own. Contains graphics for
No Rest for The Living (NERVE.WAD) and is dependent by
the helper WAD for NERVE included with Tartar distribution.
Jumpwad by ribbiks and @grain_of_sault will be loaded automatically by Tartar when found side by side with TARTAR.EXE. Out of JUMPWAD.WAD only lumps relevant to the jumping mechanics will be loaded and bindable CCMD pogo has been added to switch to "jumping" weapon. When "weapon" is active player hands will not be displayed and firing will cause player to jump. To switch away from "jumping" mode simply select any other weapon. Keyboard binding can be configured in Options menu Key Bindings/Extras.
This section lists all the new console variables introduced in Tartar.
-
v_hires - renderer resolution
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v_scale_hi - scale renderer output to higher resolution
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v_scale_aspect - scale renderer output to 4:3 aspect ratio
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v_page_flip - video mode with page flipping
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v_show_fps - show FPS counter
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r_fauxtrans - enable "checkered" translucency
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r_watertrans - enable translucent deep water
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i_ticwait - wait for new tick before video/audio updates
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smooth_turning - enable mouse turning smoothing
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mon_bloodcolor - monster bloor re-coloring
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pal_curr - number currently used palette
-
pal_next - switch to the next loaded palette
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pal_list - list all loaded palettes in the console
-
pal_prev - switch to the previous loaded palette
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screenshot - take a screenshot
-
selfie - produce the selfie stick
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comp_mushroom - enable MBF "mushroom explosion" code pointer refs
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comp_everyline - enable exhaustive checks for crossed line specials
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comp_clighting - enable SMMU colored lightling
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comp_talltex - enable experimental support for tall patches in textures
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r_norender1 - suppress sky rendering
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r_norender2 - only render a single screen column
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r_norender3 - switches sprites rendering on or off
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r_norender4 - no action
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r_norender5 - suppress top textures rendering
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r_norender6 - suppress mid textures rendering
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r_norender7 - suppress bottom textures rendering
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r_norender8 - suppress masked textures rendering
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r_norender9 - suppress floor and ceiling rendering
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r_norender0 - toggle rendering on/off
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debugcolumn - dump column rendering debug info
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pogo - switch to jumping mode
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detect_finallevel - end the game after final level of PWAD, not after MAP30
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-nodemo - don't play demos
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-wimaps - force custom intermissions even when PWAD-s are loaded
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-norender - enable rendering aids
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-fixes - location to searh for WAD-s to auto-load
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-tape - single helper WAD to autoload