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purist

Legacy PWAD compatibility

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If Wesley or anyone else has an in depth knowledge of the inner workings of Legacy, I'd be interested to know if there's any common mapping traits that will cause problems in Legacy multiplayer.

I'm specifically talking about split screen multiplayer and version 1.44 alpha 1 (Win 32) - although if compatibility differs in the newer alphas this would be useful as well.

Examples of what I mean are:

* Voodoo trickery or other vanilla hacks.
* DEHACKED patches, including state changes and other changes more complex than altering Automap level titles, etc.
* Generalised line triggers in PRBoom+ and other CL9 advanced behaviour.
* Anything else applicable, I know PWADs for advanced ports like ZDoom are likely to be broken.

If possible I'd like to know what features are unsupported and how it will affect playing in Legacy split screen (e.g. cosmetic effect / breaks map / causes crash).

This is just so I have an idea whether a PWAD will play correctly before I start.

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Splitscreen keeps the normal play rules, but just splits the screen so that two players can use it.

The use of a chase camera during splitscreen was recently fixed.

Dehacked and BEX normal files are accepted with full capability.
Dehacked was fixed in 1.44 to accept multiple changes upon the same control.
There may be a few extended flags that can also be used.

Multiplayer has enhancements over other ports, such as 32 players, team play, and player/team skins.

Voodoo damage is enhanced for multiplayer by allowing the damage to go to the player that triggered the last linedef, instead of always to player 1. This is selectable with an option menu item.
The previous beta, 1.43, did not have Voodoo dolls.

The fog linedef was enhanced recently, but backward capability was kept. Older wads like phobiata and hth2 are important, and they used
much of the capability.
There is one error check specifically to fix a phobiata.wad bug
in its Fragglescript code, that the new checking catches now.

The biggest challenge to mapping for DoomLegacy is using Fragglescript. It was enhanced in alpha4 to have tighter error checking, fix some latent bugs, and the Fragglescript docs were updated.

There are several DoomLegacy linedefs, which provide fog and 3dfloors.
DoomLegacy also accepts Boom wads and implements Boom generalized linedefs.

ZDoom wads will not work with DoomLegacy 1.45 because their WAD format is not supported, and the ZDoom-isms are not supported.

What is unsupported is an open ended question, which depends upon which port's list of features you are referring to.

There is an entire _doc directory with html that covers in detail all the wad linedefs and usage.

Alpha4 is current, with significant differences over alpha1.
Alpha5 may be released in the next week. It is available by downloading the latest SVN. It would be a beta release except for an unusual problem with OpenGL fullscreen in Windows. OpenGL windowed in Windows is fine.

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wesleyjohnson said:

the Fragglescript docs were updated

Speaking of which... Is the legacywiki.net site dead? I just get an empty blank page with a tracking script from the url "parkingcrew.net".

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There are three different voodoo doll modes in Doom Legacy: Vanilla, Multispawn, and Target.

Vanilla emulates vanilla behaviour. Telefrags instantly kill the player whose doll was telefragged (usually player 1 unless the map is designed with co-op in mind), and non-instant kills can result in glitched "zombie players".
Multispawn is identical to vanilla, except the various zombie player glitches are fixed, and it is possible to set telefrags to do reduced damage. This is the default mode in maps with multiplayer voodoo dolls.
Target does not spawn mutliplayer voodoo dolls, instead it only spawns the player 1 doll(s) (even if player 1 is not present), and tries to determine which player damaged it. This doesn't always work correctly, and is intended as a workaround for maps that aren't designed for co-op. This is the default mode in maps with only player 1 voodoo dolls.

Normally, you should just leave this on Auto, unless playing a map that depends on unusual voodoo doll behaviour.

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Gez said:

Speaking of which... Is the legacywiki.net site dead? I just get an empty blank page with a tracking script from the url "parkingcrew.net".

Not sure. I was responsible for the day-to-day caretaking, but that got alot easier when I disabled signups due to spambots, heh. No one (as in real people) made any edits, so there's been nothing to patrol and I haven't been paying much attention to it lately. Haven't heard from Slyde for a while. He's been very generously providing the hosting and the domain name. Looks like his own site is currently a placeholder of sorts. He's got a steam account if anyone wants to try reaching him on there, but I won't install that thing on my PC, heh.

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Thanks for the replies everyone. So what I get from this is that if the PWAD works in PRBoom+ it will work in Legacy, regardless of any voodoo doll tricks, DEH changes, CL9 features or extended line triggers.

What prompted this question was that Whitemare MAP01 (limit removing PWAD) caused Legacy to crash, but this may have been due to general port distability rather than anything in the map as I don't think it was particularly complex or hacky.

I will therefore play on in full faith :-)

Wesley, if you like I can report any crashes to you if and when they occur by PM or email?

Lastly, with Alpha 5 due out shortly is it worth me upgrading from Alpha 1? I'm not bothered about any new features and would rather not do all my config again but if there are any noticeable bugs that are fixed I'd give the new alpha a try.

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The bug fixes and improvements in alpha4 and alpha5 are considerable, especially some that affect old wad compatibility. The listings in _doc/whatsnew.html goes on for more than a page for each (depending upon your font size and screen size).
Some long standing rendering problems have been addressed.

Config should be compatible (same config file, some new options, automatic update). I switch back and forth continuously.

Need the new legacy.wad for 1.44 alpha4 and alpha5, the latest will work.
One of the older 1.44 alpha legacy.wad had a bad lump name (It maybe only affected Plutonia, I think ??).

No promises that there is not a wad that can crash it. Some strange wad editing tricks are incompatible with the modified code in advanced ports. I keep finding more of these cases.

There were some wads that due to wad errors could crash Legacy, and some better checks were added to intercept those cases, giving explicit error messages. The preferred behavior is to disable the offending wad element, and allow the wad to be played anyway.

A blockmap loader adaptation was added to allow it to play Europe.wad which is so huge it overruns the blockmap indexing five times.

DoomLegacy has a sprite limit control so it can play nuts.wad and longdays.wad with a reasonable render rate. I have forgot which alpha it first appeared.


The DoomLegacy bug reporting is at the SourceForge DoomLegacy project site:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=2479&atid=102479

The DoomLegacy site is at:
http://doomlegacy.sourceforge.net/

I am not familiar with legacywiki.net. SmiteMeister manages the DoomLegacy site. I had noticed some of the linked sites are broken or dead.

There is a Legacy forum at NewDoom. I had assumed that NewDoom was dead, but I see two new posts (2013).
I had tried to register a few years ago but was immediately "Blacklisted for life", which I had assumed was their way to disable new accounts being that I had not even posted anything yet.

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wesleyjohnson said:

There is a Legacy forum at NewDoom. I had assumed that NewDoom was dead, but I see two new posts (2013).

We're in 2014. And two posts in 2013? It's dead.

If you want a Legacy forum, I'd suggest contacting the Doomworld admins to get a hosted forum here (like Eternity) or the DRD Team admins to get a hosted forum there (like GZDoom). At least it's still possible to register on those places...

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NewDoom: It seems dead. I tried to register in 2009 and got the "Banned for Life" response.
But it seems that those who already have an account can still post messages (as of 2013).
For anyone who might encounter a link to the NewDoom site, from the DoomLegacy site, or otherwise, this is the state of affairs. I do not know what to call it, ... it is a zombie maybe.

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