Talk:Skulltag

monsters
Do the skulltag monsters deserve their own articles? Or an article "Skulltag Monsters", or maybe just sections in this article? I ask because they are wikilinked and somebody has created Dark Imp (the content of which should probably just go in here). -- Jdowland 19:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it was decided somewhere else (maybe) that custom monsters not in the original games went in their respective game/mod/source port articles. Bloodshedder 00:56, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. It was decided that custom weapons went in their respective game/mod/port articles, although IIRC some people thought that this discussion alone was not conclusive enough for a final decision.


 * The larger question here is: which new features in source ports deserve their own articles and which do not? Some, like scripting languages, seem to get their own articles without any debate.  I can believe that a scripting language generally takes more effort and is far less common than a new Thing, but is that by itself enough reason to confine the monsters/weapons to one paragraph each?  (Maybe it is.  I've never tried it so I don't know.)  Does a monster or weapon mod become more notable simply by being bundled with a popular source port?  (It certainly becomes far more widely known, as the Skulltag partisans here have pointed out.)  Are helper dogs new monsters or a new engine feature?


 * Maybe we can agree that anything reproducible with a DeHackEd patch is too minor to have its own article, but we may want to make exceptions for particularly infamous cases (the rocket trooper comes to mind).   Ryan W 17:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Cacolantern has been created also.   Ryan W 17:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Helper dog has enough information in it to deserve an article of it's own: also, it's present in all MBF derivatives, which includes Eternity and Prboom, so it's relatively widespread. Cacolantern and Dark Imp do not. -- Jdowland 19:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Aspect Ratio
It has been brought to my attention that someone here is repeatedly restoring some bogus report about an aspect ratio bug in Skulltag. This information is not correct. There is no aspect ratio bug in Skulltag which behaves exactly like all other source ports out there. Graf Zahl 22:17, 13. June 2007
 * [[Image:SkulltagAspect.jpg|thumb|right|640px|A demonstration of the lack of aspect compensation, with original pistol sprite for aspect comparison.]]

If everyone does it wrong, it's still wrong. Tangent 08:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The one on the left is actually correct, if you go by how Vanilla Doom behaves. Doom originally ran fullscreen in 320x200 mode.  Most monitors are a 4:3 aspect ratio, so to fill the screen the monitors does some vertical stretching.
 * Nowadays, some monitors don't support 320x200 or 640x400 properly any more. If you run in this resolution, you're likely to get black borders at the top and bottom of the screen because the monitor is actually running in 320x240 / 640x480 and the OS is compensating.
 * For Chocolate Doom I've actually written aspect ratio correction code that stretches the 320x200 screen so that you can run in 640x480 and have it appear how it appeared in DOS when Doom originally came out. Arguably this is how it's supposed to appear - the zombies look squashed down when running in a 1:1 pixel ratio, whereas when running with aspect ratio correction they appear tall and in the proportions that you expect a human to appear.
 * The image on the right shows how the status bar face should appear on your screen if the port is doing aspect ratio correction properly. Fraggle 16:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * But in the ratio you feel is correct causes round sprites such as Cacodemons or the Megasphere and Soulsphere to become oval. Why would a behavior that causes such stretching be considered correct? Even if the 16:10->4:3 is correct (which I strongly doubt), Skulltag does not display 16:10 at the same aspect ratio as 4:3. Tangent 19:02, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That's just how they appear in Doom. You might want to check out Image:Aspect_Ratio_Mona_Lisa.png which demonstrates that with the aspect ratio corrected ("stretched"), the status bar face better matches the shape of the human face. Fraggle 19:16, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, I just did some experiments with the cacodemon sprite. If you examine it you'll find it's not round, but actually a squashed oval.  When you stretch it up to correct the aspect ratio it looks rounder.  I think the sprites and other graphics in Doom were specifically designed for the 8:5 aspect ratio. Fraggle 19:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Also also, an astral dreadnought head is not perfectly round, and the sphere powerups in Doom may well be based on the extra life powerups from Wolfenstein 3D, which IIRC were not perfectly round (though it's been a while since I played that in 320x200 either).   Ryan W 21:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Everything else of that is conjecture, and the Cacodemon definitely does not look rounder when stretched vertically (it is ~10% taller than wide). Either way, Skulltag does not include compensation for the differences between 16:10 and 4:3 so they display in different ways, which is not normal game behavior. Hopefully you can at least understand this.
 * Maybe we need the input of an original team member regarding the aspect.
 * EDIT: Doom Advance and Doom RPG display the sprites in the aspect that I feel is correct. Tangent 22:47, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Both 640x480 and 640x400 should appear the same, aside from a slight increase in graininess in the vertical direction. There shouldn't be any black bars at the top or bottom, as pixels in 640x400 (and 320x200) aren't square, but slightly higher than their width. (By 6/5, which unsurprisingly is equal to 480/400.)
 * Of course, there's always a chance that even vanilla Doom got this wrong, and should have applied A/R correction in the opposite direction. But after seeing that Mona Lisa demonstration, I doubt it...
 * What might be useful for the Aspect ratio article are photographs of what things should and shouldn't look like in vanilla and various ports, since the A/R of screenshots is dependent on the viewer's display. -- CODOR 00:59, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
 * See, that's what I'm thinking, that vanilla Doom did this wrong due to a technical limitation, or maybe nobody noticed (many people can't easily distinguish aspect distortion). I do see it's possible that they could have intended it to be stretched, but it seems more likely to me that they gave the humanoids slightly unrealistic proportions than that they didn't want circles to actually be round.
 * I emailed John Romero about it, but his response was "I have no idea" because he thought I was talking only about Doom 95, so I need to clarify that. Tangent 09:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Here is some pretty convincing evidence that Doom was designed for the unusual 320x200 aspect ratio. On the left is the Doom guy's head as it appears on the title screen when the aspect ratio is corrected (ie. stretched to fit the screen). The right is the uncorrected version. In the center is the head as it appears on the Doom box art. It seems pretty clear from this that at least the title screen was designed for the 320x200 aspect ratio, and if that's the case, it's likely that most of the other art work was as well. Fraggle 03:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That makes sense, but there are still many sprites that don't look correct at all, such as the rocket, which becomes short and oval. Perhaps they only designed some of the sprites for distortion? Tangent 20:09, 17 June 2007 (UTC)