Helion - C# (0.9.5.0 11/24 - Goodbye BSP tree rendering)

[hobomaster22]

1 hour ago, Turin Turambar said:

Yeah...

 

 

 

He has been working for a while.Any idea of when the next stable version will be released?

 

I'm planning to release the last week in October. I have been working for a while but @lemming104 and another contributor have put a lot of work into this release as well.

The current list of changes for the next release can be seen here.
 

[S3M_XM]

There's a preview of 0.9.5.0 that's been released 3 weeks ago if you want to use that for now.

[lemming104]

I should look into getting nightly builds configured at some point. I set up some other automation a few weeks ago.

 

The only "hard" requirement for making your own local builds is the .NET 8 SDK (no other weird tools or configuration stuff required), so that should also be pretty easy for the more adventurous.

[Eric Claus]

Hello everybody, sometime ago I did a Q&A with hobomaster22 and finally finished and and had a wadazine article posted about Helion the motive of it's development etc now in its final version! It will also be included in the next published wadazine, but I also requested in be posted as it was a long time in production and hobomaster22 said it was alright to post here. Hope everyone enjoys!

 

https://wadazine.com/2024/10/helion-the-rising-star/

[S3M_XM]

What happened to the "Sprite Translucency" option in 0.9.5.0-preview-2?

[hobomaster22]

4 hours ago, S3M_XM said:

What happened to the "Sprite Translucency" option in 0.9.5.0-preview-2?

We are adding it back to the options menu. It can be changed in the console using render.spritetransparency.

[S3M_XM]

When I was playing Tricking & Tearing at Warpspeed at map05, after killing the alien egg, the corpse causes to be impassable (which I've had a similar thing with a dead cacodemon from Frozen Heart) and didn't do anything as it's supposed to be a Keen death effect as the monsters teleport in, tried the same thing in Doom Retro and it didn't had any problems but not on Helion.

[MrSt1ff]

I've just played with this engine, and I must say: Congrats to the authors.

It's mind-blowing that I achieved ~500fps playing Sunder on my i3 at 1080p. Now that's what I call code optimisation, lol

Quick question: Is there any parameter as complevel that I could use, or something similar?

Quick question 2: Just out of curiosity, will vanilla demos desync?

As a side-note, you guys just inspired me to learn C#.

[lemming104]

1.  There is a "complvl" console variable, and the "compatibility" menu in the dev branch and thus the upcoming 0.9.5.0 release exposes presets for that, so you can set it to vanilla or Boom or whatever.  Presently, the only presets are vanilla, Boom, MBF, and MBF21, if I recall correctly.  I don't know offhand whether there is also a command-line param.

 

2.  This engine is unfortunately not demo-compatible with the original games or with any other source port.  I don't know whether hobomaster22 has any other thoughts on the matter, but it seems pretty unlikely to me that we'd ever achieve demo compat.

 

In an unrelated point, we should also have nightly builds now.  Obviously, these might have bugs and/or not-fully-tested functionality.  https://github.com/Helion-Engine/Helion/releases/tag/nightly

[hobomaster22]

7 hours ago, MrSt1ff said:

I've just played with this engine, and I must say: Congrats to the authors.

It's mind-blowing that I achieved ~500fps playing Sunder on my i3 at 1080p. Now that's what I call code optimisation, lol

Quick question: Is there any parameter as complevel that I could use, or something similar?

Quick question 2: Just out of curiosity, will vanilla demos desync?

As a side-note, you guys just inspired me to learn C#.

Thanks! I love seeing these numbers on all types of hardware.

1. We added COMPLVL to the options menu for the next release. It is set from the COMPLVL lump in wads. To change it to vanilla you use the command COMPLVL
vanilla in the console. The specific compat options modified by the overall COMPLVL are visible in Options -> Compatibility.

2. Helion uses it's own demo format so they will not work. Demos outside of Helion wouldn't work for a variety of reasons. Like GZDoom, Helion uses doubles instead of fixed point integers for most everything that would make demo compatibility impossible.
 

10 hours ago, S3M_XM said:

When I was playing Tricking & Tearing at Warpspeed at map05, after killing the alien egg, the corpse causes to be impassable (which I've had a similar thing with a dead cacodemon from Frozen Heart) and didn't do anything as it's supposed to be a Keen death effect as the monsters teleport in, tried the same thing in Doom Retro and it didn't had any problems but not on Helion.

Thanks for the report. This has been fixed for 0.9.5.0.

There is also a Helion Discord group for anyone that wants to join.
 

[Soulinus]

On 10/23/2024 at 11:24 AM, hobomaster22 said:

Thanks! I love seeing these numbers on all types of hardware.

1. We added COMPLVL to the options menu for the next release. It is set from the COMPLVL lump in wads. To change it to vanilla you use the command COMPLVL
vanilla in the console. The specific compat options modified by the overall COMPLVL are visible in Options -> Compatibility.

2. Helion uses it's own demo format so they will not work. Demos outside of Helion wouldn't work for a variety of reasons. Like GZDoom, Helion uses doubles instead of fixed point integers for most everything that would make demo compatibility impossible.
 

Thanks for the report. This has been fixed for 0.9.5.0.

There is also a Helion Discord group for anyone that wants to join.
 

I've been reading about Hellion for a while and I just tried it this morning, and I'm loving what I'm seeing, very good job, and congratulations on achieving such fine work.

Quick questions:
1 - I understand that demos aren't compatible between sourceports due to what you explained above, but is the sourceport "accurate"? (Would enemy behavior in this port behave the same just like any "vanilla" running sourceport).

2 - Are demos compatible between versions? (Meaning, are demos recorded in 0.9.4.0 compatible with future versions)?
3 - I know you also develop DoomLauncher (another fine piece of software). Is this sourceport compatible with it? Meaning, would stats be tracked in DoomLauncher while using this?

[hobomaster22]

2 hours ago, Soulinus said:

I've been reading about Hellion for a while and I just tried it this morning, and I'm loving what I'm seeing, very good job, and congratulations on achieving such fine work.

Quick questions:
1 - I understand that demos aren't compatible between sourceports due to what you explained above, but is the sourceport "accurate"? (Would enemy behavior in this port behave the same just like any "vanilla" running sourceport).

2 - Are demos compatible between versions? (Meaning, are demos recorded in 0.9.4.0 compatible with future versions)?
3 - I know you also develop DoomLauncher (another fine piece of software). Is this sourceport compatible with it? Meaning, would stats be tracked in DoomLauncher while using this?

1. Yes.
2. For the most part, yes. The issue here is that bug fixes to resolve issues found that don't match vanilla/boom behavior could cause a desync if recorded in an old version without the bug fix.
3. Yes. Helion uses -levelstat like other Boom based ports and Helion is implemented in Doom Launcher.

[hobomaster22]

Helion 0.9.5.0

 

A lot of new features in this release. Here are some of the big features:

• ID24 mapping features
  • Sheet that specifies what has been implemented so far. This is the checklist Gooberman provided. Lines marked in gray are not applicable to Helion. Nearly all of the practical mapping features for ID24 have been implemented (map specials, colormaps, dehacked specifications, new sky definitions etc). The more cosmetic stuff like intermission and HUD changes for example are still to do.
• Basic game controller support
  • Will need feedback from the community on this.
• ZMusic support for MP3, OGG, common tracker formats, and optional MIDI playback using OPL emulator
• "Melt" wipe on transition

Spoiler

Features:

Initial id24 specification support

SoundFont picker dialog

Minor usability improvement to options menus (can see and restore defaults)

Status bar texture picker dialog

Added automap marker functionality to key binding options

"Melt" screen wipe added

Save game improvements: Saves can be named, pagination added to Save/Load dialog, rotating auto/quicksaves added

Expanded support for music formats and more synthesizer options, via ZMusic

Game controller support

TRANSLATION1 and TRANSLATION2 flag support for true-color rendering

ENDOOM text screen on quit

Gamma correction

Sound velocity option

Option to control filter type for virtual screen scaling

xBRZ upscaling option for menu and HUD text elements

 

Bug fixes:

Fix various issues with intermission screen and end-game screen formatting, including use of widescreen assets, text flow, alignment, pillarbox masking on scrolling finales

Interpolate weapon raise/lower animations and chainsaw bobbing

Prevent mouse vertical movement from causing the player to move when mouselook is enabled

Fix issues related to building on case-sensitive file systems (Linux)

Fix rendering order for two-sided middle walls that could cause flats/walls behind not to render

Fix boom WR lock door lines from constantly triggering key messages when contacting

Fix two-sided middle scrolling to offset entire texture by the Y value when rendering to match original doom behavior

Fix visual scroll offsets not being restored from a save for walls and flats

Fix instant sector floors not raising when two monsters are overlapping

Fix A_BfgSpray to be created after damage so they are rendered at corpse height if a monster is killed.

Fix issue with screenshot command not being processed.

Various fixes around key bindings saved to config file

Fix an issue that caused the process' working set to grow rapidly on level changes

Fix max ammo display on status bar in PWADs that modify this property

Fix rendering of taller fonts

Fix issue with clearing multiple automap markers

Fix self-referencing sectors to not block hitscan attacks and line of sight checks to match original doom behavior

Fix boom silent teleport specials to keep height from floor

Add missing PLS1EXP5 dehacked lookup (fixes decoration in Frozen Heart)

Map dehacked TRANSLATION bit memnomic to TRANSLATION1

Fix dehacked frame misc1/2 to correctly set weapon sprite offsets through the weapon frame state only

Fix rendering that would stop sprites from rendering behind two-sided transparent walls when not using emulate vanilla rendering

Fix monsters infighting too easily

Improve detection of WADs installed from Steam

Separate HUD and menu scaling into two different options

Fix incorrect dehacked mapping for BEXP5

Rework FluidSynth loading sequence to prevent a crash on some systems and speed up music track changes

Prevent user from overwriting autosaves via quick save

Fix issue with savegame compatibility settings persisting to user config

Fix MusicChangers breaking when loading saves

Fix random crash from sounds trying to play while loading a new map

Fix dehacked to correctly use A_SPosAttack function with hard-coded shotgun sound

Fix map start specials not getting written to autosaves

Fix boom generic specials to allow monsters to trigger of off model if change is 0

Fix various UMAPINFO issues dealing with nointermission intertext, intertextsecret, endgame, endpic, and intermusic

Fix berserk only restoring to initial health when modified through dehacked

Fix OpenGL context using 3.3 with Intel iGPUs when a higher version is supported

Fix dehacked level string replacement for automap/console/loading displays

Fix reversed x/y scroll values for MBF21 1024 scroll special

Fix velocity being set for certain sounds and not cleared that can cause pitch variations

Fix MAP24 sky rendering issue during ship fire sequence for Eviternity II final

Fix MAPINFO/ZMAPINFO defaultmap clearing properties (fixes Eviternity MAP30 endgame sequence)

Fix clicking/popping noises in WAV audio files (credit: sinshu)

Fix A_KeenDie to call A_Fall (fixes blocking alien eggs in Tricking & Tearing at Warpspeed MAP05)

Fix transfer heights flats not rendering with emulate vanilla rendering

Fix transparent sprites discarding two-sided middle walls with emulate vanilla rendering

Fix dehacked parsing for frame args to match dehacked parsing behavior for bad integer strings

Fix projectile spawn not setting previous position causing the first frame to interpolate very close to the screen

Fix transfer height colormaps not being applied if the colormap passes as a valid doom image (fixes twogers MAP36)

 

[LuciferSam86]

Cool cool , congratulations for the release 🎉