PrBoom+ name bikeshedding

I like the idea of changing the name to uBoom once the umapinfo stuff is ready

On 6/21/2019 at 1:51 AM, printz said:

My dream vision is to just merge PrBoom+ and Eternity into a single powerful port. I can't see anything mutually exclusive between them. 

Honestly this. What is left for Eternity to take from it at this point aside from complevels?

I don't think traditional players would be too happy with their port of choice getting merged with an advanced port...

2 hours ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

I don't think traditional players would be too happy with their port of choice getting merged with an advanced port...

Except Eternity Engine isn't really an advanced engine like zdoom is. It still aims to be a demo compatible port.

4 hours ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

I don't think traditional players would be too happy with their port of choice getting merged with an advanced port...

Imho, it's like complaining that your PC has too much RAM.

Just because it gives you more freedom it doesn't mean you can't (if you want) enforce constrains on it.

As long as there's a way to reliably switch a complevel option and have it behave exactly as PrBoom did (something ZDoom ports can't do, but Eternity has a good chance to), why should it be a problem?

You could argue PrBoom+ with its fancy extra features is already a modern port compared with vanilla Doom.

Their point is that with PrBoom+ (which, feature-wise, is mostly just MBF ported to modern systems) you're confined to a nice set of rules on how to make a mod. You can make a great deal of special behaviour just with MBF's Dehacked and Boom's conveyors, but you're still limited within a classic Doom discipline. With extra features added on top, this incentive is lost.

1 hour ago, printz said:

With extra features added on top, this incentive is lost.

Oh no. My incentive.

4 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Except Eternity Engine isn't really an advanced engine like zdoom is. It still aims to be a demo compatible port.

These notions are not mutually exclusive.

ZDoom dropped demo compatibility to make it simpler to overhaul and enhance features without having to worry about demo regression; PrBoom+ (mostly) stopped getting new editing features to focus solely on demo compatibility; but you can mix both in the same engine. It's just more work to do.

54 minutes ago, Gez said:

These notions are not mutually exclusive.

 

ZDoom dropped demo compatibility to make it simpler to overhaul and enhance features without having to worry about demo regression; PrBoom+ (mostly) stopped getting new editing features to focus solely on demo compatibility; but you can mix both in the same engine. It's just more work to do.

why would anyone care about demos i dont get it. we have youtube whats the point of demos

I personally believe that PrBoom+'s biggest appeal is not its limited modding ruleset but rather its accuracy of emulating different .exes (via complevels) and demo recording/playback features coupled with good performance due to having a hardware renderer. I don't think anything of value is lost if PrBoom+ adds more editing/modding features provided that there is no regression in demo compatibility.

33 minutes ago, Fonze said:

Truthfully a better question is how one can be a doom fan and not care about demos.

oh, noes. i am not a doom fan anymore.

1 hour ago, unpleasantmarine said:

why would anyone care about demos i dont get it. we have youtube whats the point of demos

We have Doom speedruns from 1994 that can be watched in perfect fidelity, unlike most of the rest of the speedrunning scene, where speedrunning was apparently invented no earlier than 2006 and only then more in blurry postage stamp myth than reality.

7 minutes ago, Linguica said:

 

We have Doom speedruns from 1994 that can be watched in perfect fidelity, unlike the rest of the speedrunning community, where speedrunning was apparently invented no earlier than 2006 and only then more in blurry postage stamp myth than reality.

im not really sure what your saying but personally i find it more convient to watch demos on youtube than to download them, go to prboom-plus directory, open cmd and type prboom-plus -playdemo 69ddsdadf420.lmp

but this is getting off topic i better shut up before i get banned

40 minutes ago, unpleasantmarine said:

im not really sure what your saying but personally i find it more convient to watch demos on youtube than to download them, go to prboom-plus directory, open cmd and type prboom-plus -playdemo 69ddsdadf420.lmp

 

but this is getting off topic i better shut up before i get banned

You can also associate demo files with whatever source port you prefer, such as prboom+, and then double click them to make them play as a means to bypass using command lines for many demos.

37 minutes ago, unpleasantmarine said:

im not really sure what your saying but personally i find it more convient to watch demos on youtube than to download them, go to prboom-plus directory, open cmd and type prboom-plus -playdemo 69ddsdadf420.lmp

 

but this is getting off topic i better shut up before i get banned

Nah, it's your opinion after all.

But yeah demos are definitely important in Doom for all sorts of reasons, some of which being already mentioned. What Lin tried to say by "perfect fidelity", I think, was that you can simply download a demo and play it in whatever compatible port you desire regardless of your game settings (good luck watching ancient videos with very poor video or audio quality). Those can also be analyzed so people can better understand what was is going on and also detect potential cheating.

They can also be useful for testing maps and whatnot.

4 minutes ago, Fonze said:

 

You can also associate demo files with whatever source port you prefer, such as prboom+, and then double click them to make them play as a means to bypass using command lines for many demos.

oh yeah i forgot about that. i will do that

2 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

I personally believe that PrBoom+'s biggest appeal is not its limited modding ruleset but rather its accuracy of emulating different .exes (via complevels) and demo recording/playback features coupled with good performance due to having a hardware renderer. I don't think anything of value is lost if PrBoom+ adds more editing/modding features provided that there is no regression in demo compatibility.

For me, biggest appeal of PrBoom+ is the limited modding ruleset. My reason not to use GZDoom as my main source port is that it is too easy to get too crazy with all kinds of mods and tweaks. Using choco, crispy or prboom+ helps me to focus on just things that make classic Doom gameplay so great and unique. GZDoom has so much modding potential but it could be argued that there is just too much of it. For beginner modders, limited modding ruleset can be so much easier place to start.

And it can often be very useful to have static modding standard that reliably just will never change. Problem with new editing/modding features is that they will change what the term "boom compatible" means. That could cause alot of trouble, especially since PrBoom+ isn't the only source port with support for boom ruleset.

1 minute ago, banjiepixel said:

Problem with new editing/modding features is that they will change what the term "boom compatible" means. That could cause alot of trouble, especially since PrBoom+ isn't the only source port with support for boom ruleset.

I suspect it'd more be the introduction of another, higher cross-platform mapping standard, with traditional Boom/MBF-compatible not really going anywhere for legacy reasons.

In the case of UMAPINFO, the mapping itself is more or less exactly as limited as ever, it's just there's a bit more freedom in how maps are ordered in the overall flow of the playthrough. I guess BossAction is an exception, you can do some interesting setups on any given map with that, but that's about it.

1 hour ago, unpleasantmarine said:

im not really sure what your saying but personally i find it more convient to watch demos on youtube than to download them, go to prboom-plus directory, open cmd and type prboom-plus -playdemo 69ddsdadf420.lmp

It is easier to watch a Youtube than play a Doom demo and that's what I will generally do too. But the Youtube video is a recording of gameplay footage, whereas the .lmp file is the gameplay footage. It is also much smaller than a video file so people can save them long term and amass whole libraries of demos.

I think people who missed the early days of the internet don't appreciate it as much, but is extremely valuable to have this sort of decentralized control, instead of the evidence of your record being a Youtube video that may or may not still exist in another decade.

I definitely would love to see PrBoom merge with Eternity. There's literally nothing of value lost at all, in fact, for new users it should say at startup "Coming from PrBoom? Go to the menu and change to the MBF (or PrBoom?) Complevel!"

Almost everything introduced by Eternity is still 100% optional, like those nice particle effects and other special renderer features i can't remember right now. Still, there's absolutely nothing that would stop new mappers from using Boom, as it still has benefits compared to Eternity's other formats. Like, you know, working on basically all Boom-compatible ports, vs Eternity where you would need to make a separate version of the map for ZDoom.

As i see it, it would be a crime to not merge. Althrough i would definitely wait until Eternity got some GL3D renderer because that's a very important option in PrBoom.

32 minutes ago, -TDRR- said:

I definitely would love to see PrBoom merge with Eternity. There's literally nothing of value lost at all, in fact, for new users it should say at startup "Coming from PrBoom? Go to the menu and change to the MBF (or PrBoom?) Complevel!"

Problem with complevels is that many people do not like to go that deep in the settings with their Doom playing experience. Most casual players will play with source port's default complevel. I am one those players, I barely touch any compatibility settings because they can be so confusing and it is just alot work to change it always when you switch to different wad. Maybe the whole thing should be somehow automated process with optional manual user override.

It's not demos per se I care about in Eternity, it's the fact that it grew organically into a more modern port. Adding and fitting new stuff without sacrificing anything to achieve it (I know the opposite has been happening with it, but this is my vision). 

Sorry for off topic, but wanted to make it clear... 

PrBoom+ name? GZBoom sounds fair if @Graf Zahl took over. But then it would sound like a more advanced version of GZDoom, which right now is false.

Just call it PrBoomX. Extended thanks to UMAPINFO. 

Just now, printz said:

Just call it PrBoomX. Extended thanks to UMAPINFO.

I dig this one.

What is gained from merging EE and prBoom+?

And there are some significant differences between the ui of both ports, so which design decisions win?

Because I would rather not live in a time line where EE has prBoom+'s menus or odd multi-message system.

There are other things about prBoom+ that make me rather used a different engine to play some Doom.

I just use it to view demos. If I was a runner, then I'd probably use it to play too. Although Crispy and Chocolate exists, so...

Of course fixing -vanilla and adding -boom and -mbf seem rather useful, what I most want is scripting and Heretic/Hexen support.

But I would most prefer the devs do what they feel is best.

10 minutes ago, printz said:

Just call it PrBoomX. Extended thanks to UMAPINFO. 

didnt the op say "It's named for a coder who has been gone for decades"

although tbh i always thought Pr meant portable cause it has been ported to a lot of things

35 minutes ago, banjiepixel said:

Problem with complevels is that many people do not like to go that deep in the settings with their Doom playing experience. Most casual players will play with source port's default complevel. I am one those players, I barely touch any compatibility settings because they can be so confusing and it is just alot work to change it always when you switch to different wad. Maybe the whole thing should be somehow automated process with optional manual user override.

Except that it's actually not a lot of work to get right? And an automated process is technically impossible to implement.

The vast majority, if not all compat settings, are covered by the presets in GZDoom, and checking a wad's readme to know which -complevel to put in the Target box when playing with PrBoom+ takes just a few seconds. I think the "difficulty" of setting the compat right is blown out of proportion.

14 minutes ago, unpleasantmarine said:

didnt the op say "It's named for a coder who has been gone for decades"

Yeah but it has stuck in people's memory. People know Boom is the classic feature port which started it all, and PrBoom is the stronger, modern OS port of it. The only big trouble has been with +, a non alphanumeric symbol, a bit harder to search online. 

9 minutes ago, seed said:

 

Except that it's actually not a lot of work to get right? And an automated process is technically impossible to implement.

 

The vast majority, if not all compat settings, are covered by the presets in GZDoom, and checking a wad's readme to know which -complevel to put in the Target box when playing with PrBoom+ takes just a few seconds. I think the "difficulty" of setting the compat right is blown out of proportion.

I agree, and if you don't like fiddling around with the command line, there's always a launcher.

Hmm, is there any launcher that has a complevel drop down box (Preferably with short descriptions?)

If prBoom+ was more complex it could always support a lump or file that could be read by the engine to automate this. GZDoom has gameinfo and EE has GFSs. Something like that with cl support could allow modders to make it Just Work^tm.

3 hours ago, unpleasantmarine said:

im not really sure what your saying but personally i find it more convient to watch demos on youtube than to download them

How do you think these recordings ever made it to YouTube in the first place? Right, they were played back in PrBoom+