Is DeePsea worth it to get the full version? Does anyone use it regularly?

At this moment we have Doom Builders, SLADE3 and Eureka.
But I heard that DeePsea http://www.sbsoftware.com/ has some unique features. Although it is not updated since 2011.

Discuss.

Checked the features page and it seems like it has nothing that GZDB can't do, except ACS Decompiler.

It's not likely to give you anything that DoomBuilder and other editors don't already give you.

The map overhead preview seems nice.

It's not worth it, unless you're looking to do something extremely obscure. Years ago when the Doom editing options were much more limited, DeePsea was probably a good buy, but even ten years ago nearly all of its noteworthy features were already available in other, friendlier programs that you could get for free. Nowadays, SLADE and GZDoomBuilder have everything pretty well covered.

I have and still use the paid-for version of DeePsea. In fact, most of the time it's still my go-to editor. It's a real Swiss army knife of an editor that can do just about anything you want with a map or a WAD file. I know it inside out and my unfamiliarity with other tools means something I could do in seconds in DeePsea takes me minutes in more modern alternatives. As a result I find using other tools frustrating: I know they can do the thing I want but I just can't find it. I do dip in and try every now and again and I'll probably get there one day but my motivation to do so is limited.

However, because it hasn't been actively worked on for a number of years now, DeePsea has fallen behind the curve. It doesn't support PK3 files or UDMF maps and PNG graphics support is only partial as is automatic support for DECORATE items other than the original very simple original DECORATE format. With ZScript becoming a reality, that's another feature it doesn't support. DeePsea can also be a bit quirky on versions of Windows after XP. That being said, I did have an exchange of emails with Jack Vermeulen (the author of DeePsea) a month or two back and he helped me out with a problem that I was having getting the 3D editing mode to work in Windows 10. I hadn't "spoken" to him in years and yet he was still very helpful.

So, for someone looking to get into editing, it would be difficult to recommend DeePsea over a combination of GZDoomBuilder and Slade these days. GZDB and Slade are both excellent, very stable tools that are actively worked on and support all modern features and are still evolving as the ports and features they support evolve too.

Personally, I'd really like to see DeePsea worked on again and brought up to speed with modern features but that seems highly unlikely. I didn't really discuss it with Jack but the fact that he no longer gets involved in the community may well indicate a lack of interest in getting back into it and, to be fair, the feature catch-up that DeePsea would require is pretty significant and unless he was particularly motivated, I really couldn't blame any author for not wanting to do it.

This wasn't mentioned in this thread, but DeePSea does come in a free, full-feature version. The down side is that one can only build maps with a specified size limit with the free "trial" version. The all-in-one editing tools always appealed to me, but I wasn't keen on paying USD 20 for the program.

Memfis said:

The map overhead preview seems nice.

I just noticed that the screenpic Memfis posted was of a folder named "Enjay" (which contained a bunch of wads created by the eponymous Enjay). Heh!

ReX said:

This wasn't mentioned in this thread, but DeePSea does come in a free, full-feature version. The down side is that one can only build maps with a specified size limit with the free "trial" version. The all-in-one editing tools always appealed to me, but I wasn't keen on paying USD 20 for the program.

Yeah, I loved the lump editor part of DeePSea. It totally replaced WinTex for me (which I couldn't manage to make work anyway). And I was still using it after XWE appeared, for tasks which XWE wasn't very good at. Nowadays SLADE seems powerful enough to include whatever DeePSea had, such as vanilla format texture lump editing, and with less noise.

But this topic is about the full map editor version of DeePSea, and it's unfortunate that its author(s) (Sensor Based Software) aren't maintaining it, like some form of premium competitor for GZDoom Builder.

DeepSea would be fine if it wasn't hopelessly outdated and required payment. But as it stands, it's clearly not worth paying for if you want to stay in touch with current port development.

Not having UDMF makes it instantly unappealing for both ZDoom and Eternity development because ever more features will no longer be made available in the old map formats for the simple reason that they'd require horrible kludges to get working.

For vanilla/Boom mapping it may still have some value, but with several free editors available there's certainly better options out there.

I used it a lot in the late 90's/early 00's - at the time it seemed like a great editor, a big step-up from the DOS-based one's I was used to. I really like the slightly quirky curve tool. The sound effects were mildly irritating.

But yeah, it's had its day. The one feature it had that I liked and which is not present in GZDB (so far as I can tell - I've only recently shifted over to this from DB2 so might be missing it) is the option to pack sectors. This was handy when building maps with a high sidedef count, since it resulted in more sides with the same sector reference, and so they compressed better.

DB2 (and thus GZDB) has sidedef compression logic. It's used only when sidedefs count exceeds map format limit.