Following Tartar's Stage 5 release work on it goes ever on with at lease one subsequent maintenance release planned for next year. Some of that material is now being made available and this article covers what's new in the testing build.
Improved FM music fidelity.
The new binary was built with a modified Allegro library capable of producing secondary voices for certain instruments as per Doom original sound design, which gives the tunes a much richer polyphony similar to that achieved with Doom's bundled commercial DMX library. This adds to the features already released with Stage 5 version for a sound experience much closer to the original game with Adlib or SoundBlaster sound cards - just to refresh on those:
* Loading of Doom original instrument definitions from GENMIDI lump inside game WAD files
* Accurate instrument note offsets and pitch bend wheel handling
One final "pro tip" on sound - in Tartar SETUP.EXE make sure to select the highest number of sound channels you sound card can reliably output. E.g. I am using 16 for SBPro emulation mode of my YMF744B-R. Leaving that at auto (-1) may not do you sound hardware justice, as Allegro does not really do a good job of guessing the right value! Also... probably just ignore the sound channels setting in Tartar itself; 32 seems to be a reasonable default anyway.
Note: the secondary instrument feature only works for soundtrack in MUS format (the original Doom music format). Contemporary PWAD-s will most likely have MID format soundtrack - for those the suggestion is to switch to a GM synthesizer, as they have been, anyway, most likely not created with Adlib in mind. Also be sure to select SoundBlaster or Adlib as music card in SETUP.EXE - just leaving that at Auto-detect may not do the trick!
Fixes for visual glitches
Thanks to a hint from @RjY of Doomworld, I have included a fix for HOM effect with spaces that are seemingly built only out of skies. The fix was originally found in PrBoom and unlike there, in Tartar it is only applied when corresponding option is enabled in Options > Eternity > Tartar. That said, the option is on by default, so recent releases like Flashback and Octate no longer sport that nasty HOM at the start.
Moreover, with a small tweak to texture format handling, the marks are checked against the two previously remaining visual defects Tartar had with Eviternity. So while the sequel is now on the table - DOS players are very much welcome to try out the original installment on their retro machines; quite a benchmark in many cases, I must say!
Improved menus rendering fidelity
Yes, I happen to dig the "f"-word... Back on track - a small batch of new shims is included - for REKKR and Back to Saturn X episodes that enables new "backward compatible" menu rendering mode in Tartar. In this mode Tartar aims for geometry that is as close as possible to the original game, making the nicely adorned menus in some of the PWAD-s behave as intended.
This is paired with READ THIS finding its way back to Doom 1 main menu, and registered version ad no longer being displayed in Ultimate Doom.
Other changes and improvements
Concluding the article with smaller scale changes found in the new binary:
* In ChexQuest green hues are used for when taking damage or picking up Berserk power-up
* When Spider Mastermind or Cyberdemon is killed in map 8 of extra Doom 1 episodes (5th, 6th and so on) the game no longer immediately ends
* No longer attempt to load original Sigil when loading SIGIL II
* When loading SIGIL II also load corresponding shim WAD automatically
* Only try to play Adlib-specific version of the INTRO tune when it is found in the WAD-s
* Menu items rearranged, with less relevant relevant items moved deeper into the submenus
* Video mode debugging output and FPS counter are off by default
* Multiple new episode definitions are now supported in a single (Tartar-specific) EPISINFO lump
* Tartar credits screen now shows correct version, updated for 2024
... and that it's it for 2023! Wishes of festive gaming during this holiday season and see you next year for more updates!
