myk
Super Charge
Posts: 13100
Registered: 04-02 |
While PrBoom and PrBoom-plus support various compatibility levels (in addition to the specific compatibility settings), only a couple are widely used for recording:
For true vanilla or Doom levels, use compatibility levels 2-4, depending on the game played (2 is DOOM II, 3 is The Ultimate Doom, and 4 is Final DOOM). These compatibility levels are best used with the IWADs themselves as well as with all PWADs successfully tested by the level author with the vanilla executables or Chocolate Doom.
The three Doom compatibility levels may also be suitable with many limit removing level sets, but note that such demos will likely not play back in vanilla executables (Doom, Doom95 or Chocolate Doom) by exceeding visplane overflow limits and such, and may also suffer from the less reliable intercepts overflows. The demos will often work with Doom-plus, which lifts some of the limits by a good margin.
You can also temporarily disable intercepts emulation in levels with very high monster counts or other situations where an intercepts overflows may be too common. Examples being Nuts, Das Labor, and To Fight. That is, levels where hitscan attacks may easily go over hundreds of linedefs or things. Make sure you enable it again afterward, or use a separate copy of your CFG file called no_intercepts.cfg with overrun_intercept_emulate 0, leaving the usual prboom-plus.cfg or glboom-plus.cfg with the default overrun_intercept_emulate 1 for vanilla compatibility, because, if not, the many demos dependent on the overflow will not work properly.
For Boom levels, compatibility level 9, Boom's standard behavior, is most suitable. Practically all levels presented as "Boom compatible" will run as intended with this compatibility level. One drawback of Boom compatibility is that living monsters may fall off ledges, possibly into hard-to-access pits. Some limit-removing levels or sets that otherwise only use vanilla features may also require Boom compatibility if Boom behavior was used while testing them (we usually say they suffer from "Boomisms.") This is because there are some moving-sector differences between Boom and vanilla. There's no immediate way of knowing this, but you should be able to notice if Boom compatibility is necessary while playing the level initially and before recording, if you encounter problems under either Doom or Boom compatibility, such as switches not responding, sectors not lowering or stairs not rising.
Keep in mind the above notes while creating and testing levels, as well, if you are interested in seeing consistent demos of your levels from fellow players.
If you have any doubts or comments about this post, you can send me a private message.
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05-05-09 11:13 
