Classic Doom Limits

I've perused the internet looking for anything to help me decide what I should do, but I can't find anything on this topic:

I have a tremendous sized level for Classic Doom (tested in Doom2.exe, Doom95, etc..) and I was wondering if there were any hard coded limits to how many sidedefs/linedefs can be present in a given level. My level currently has 2300+ linedefs, and 3300+ sidedefs, but I am wanting to critically expand it (say past 5000L,7500S).

Would this be okay to do or could it have serious effects on playability? By the way, it will be for multiplayer.

By the way, I have not exceeded the visplane limit in any part of my map.

By the way, I think I used the phrase "By the way" too many times in one post :)

by the way there isn't any (easily attainable anyway) limits on numbers of linedefs or sidedefs :)

and there are vanilla wads with FAR FAR more linedefs/sidedefs than you have right now. heh, my wtc911 had 4000+ sidedefs and it was just a tiny little map, so don't worry about that, just map it :)

Heh, thanks...
This really helps out alot :) (kinda boosts my confidence)

If it interests you any, I'm creating part of a world that will include a 2200L/3000S sewer system, a 2300L/3300S city, and a 2100L/2900S desert.

Yea... talk about big.... and that might not be it!
Hope I don't run out of RAM O_o /sarcasm

If you want to know just how big you can make your maps, look at map 20 of Alien Vendetta, quite possibly one of the largest maps (number of linedefs) there is right now.

I'm sorry I'm not familiar with alot of newer levels/mods.
Can you point me to it?

Nevermind I got it.

Right here.

Wow, and I thought the Requiem was nice...
I did see a few Visplane HOM's and they even mentioned that they didn't remove these for scenery purposes.

Use a sourceport. :)

Heh

sargebaldy said:

by the way there isn't any (easily attainable anyway) limits on numbers of linedefs or sidedefs :)

and there are vanilla wads with FAR FAR more linedefs/sidedefs than you have right now. heh, my wtc911 had 4000+ sidedefs and it was just a tiny little map, so don't worry about that, just map it :)

yeah, and what was up with that filename?

woh...AV map 20 = 14839 Linedefs
I guess I shouldn't be worried about my map with a mere 1500 linedefs :)

ravage said:

Use a sourceport. :)

... It's.. uhh... against my religion.

I don't like all the new features alot of the source ports add on (such as 3D acceleration, jumping, mouselook), so I just use Doom95.
I test with Doom2.exe in detailed areas, where it will crash if it finds a visplane overflow :)

I've added up the total number of sidedefs and linedefs from the wads im merging, and it totals out to be more than what Lavarn mentioned above. 15302L/20093S :D

Maybe this level will go down in history ;)

Ichor said:

If you want to know just how big you can make your maps, look at map 20 of Alien Vendetta, quite possibly one of the largest maps (number of linedefs) there is right now.

Last time I looked - Millenium MAP24 had the most linedefs, over 15,600. An earlier version had over 17,000, but overflowed SEGS (the real thing that sets the level size limit for all the ports except ZDOOM. Now only ZDOOM can play a level that size and not only that, the real linedef limit is over 32,000 for ZDOOM.

You know, you don't have to use jump and mlook.

Well, one step at a time.
It all depends on how I'll fit my levels together. I may end up deleting parts, or adding more.

What I was planning on doing was creating a package of about 3-4 large levels, but I didn't like the concept of it, because I didn't want exits on a few of them. I decided to merge all of those into one gigantic level, so I could avoid that.

All I can say is that, this is gonna be one helluva big level.

The only real problem with large maps and DOOM.exe/DOOM2.exe is savegames wont work.

EarthQuake said:

... It's.. uhh... against my religion.

I don't like all the new features alot of the source ports add on (such as 3D acceleration, jumping, mouselook), so I just use Doom95.

Use Boom/prBoom, as these are as close to the original as possible, but without the limits.

EarthQuake said:

I don't like all the new features alot of the source ports add on (such as 3D acceleration, jumping, mouselook), so I just use Doom95.

So turn them off.

Ultimate DooMer said:

Use Boom/prBoom, as these are as close to the original as possible, but without the limits.

Not to mention that PrBoom offers nice high resolution and (gasp!) OpenGL rendering without sacrificing anything the original has to offer. Especially in comparison to Doom95 which has to be the worst option to play Doom available.

I've tried every port mentioned here, and none of them are waht I'm looking for. The closest I can think of to what I want, is (yes) Doom95.

Does anyone know if the source was released for Doom95?
If so, I'll just make the changes myself.

I thought the limit for linedefs/sidedefs was 32k. I'm sure I read that somewhere...

Okay, I did a bit of research, and I've found these out for sure:

32,767 is the limit for linedefs, sidedefs, sectors, ssectors, segs, nodes, and blockmap. The exception is for reject (which I'm supposing is twice that). The limits are hard coded and defined with unsigned short integers.

I ran into a problem with have too large a blockmap, but I compiled the map using Deepsea's old node-building process, and the size of the map's blocklist was apparently ignored... I don't think I can get around maxing anything else out though...

EarthQuake said:

Does anyone know if the source was released for Doom95?

The source will never be released for Doom95. Why you insist on using such a pile of junk is beyond me, when Zdoom in compatibility mode or prBoom are excellent Doom ports that play great and have no limitations...at least none that are going to stop your massive level.

Szymanski said:

The only real problem with large maps and DOOM.exe/DOOM2.exe is savegames wont work.

Same with Doom95. So if you expect anyone to actually play through this level they're not gonna be using Doom95 shit.

The only reason I want Doom95 is for the user friendly interface, and that the actual game is contained within the front end (or the other way around).
If I had source, I would fix alot of the problems and limitations, without changing the game. Save/Demo problems, map limits, and screen resolutions.
The modified Doom95 would only be for my local use, so it wouldn't matter to anyone out there anyway. It's not going to happen then, if the source was never released.

One last question before I leave everything as it is:
Has someone ported the Linux source straight to Win32 without changing the game itself? And can I download it somewhere?

EarthQuake said:

The modified Doom95 would only be for my local use, so it wouldn't matter to anyone out there anyway. It's not going to happen then, if the source was never released.

Has Micro$oft ever released any of their source?

EarthQuake said:

One last question before I leave everything as it is:
Has someone ported the Linux source straight to Win32 without changing the game itself? And can I download it somewhere?

strictly speaking, that is not possible. DosDoom.47 is about as raw as you can get... but that is for ms-dos.
Prboom is probably your best bet. Personally, as I've said before, I think it is the ultimate DOOM port -- exactly the final product that id was working to make.(that is, if it had been released after win95 came out)

EarthQuake said:

One last question before I leave everything as it is:
Has someone ported the Linux source straight to Win32 without changing the game itself? And can I download it somewhere?

Why would anyone do that? Such a 'port' wouldn't be of much use because it had nothing to offer. If you must have that 'classic' feeling PrBoom is certainly the best solution. You have to live with command line parameters, however. But that is still better than Doom95's startup window which has to be the crappiest Doom launcher ever invented. This thing was a real pain to use if you wanted to play custom wads.

EarthQuake said:

Has someone ported the Linux source straight to Win32 without changing the game itself? And can I download it somewhere?

Yeah, that's WinDoom. Unfortunately it has a few bugs but I think you can get around them.

DEMOn said:

strictly speaking, that is not possible. DosDoom.47 is about as raw as you can get... but that is for ms-dos.
Prboom is probably your best bet. Personally, as I've said before, I think it is the ultimate DOOM port -- exactly the final product that id was working to make.(that is, if it had been released after win95 came out)

I don't think so. Prboom is the best in the sense that it can emulate doom pretty well, but its added features invariably make it different. For instance, and most notably, the removed limits make it very hard to test a map for actual doom compatibility. Dosdoom is not as close as you can get as it has expanded limits and other small features that change stuff (plus it's for DOS, so it isn't even a port.)

I can understand the lack of a genuine port up to 2000, since practically anyone could get it to run on the current OSs (Windows 95 or 98.) But things have changed, as many people now use Windows 2000 or Windows XP where the original EXEs hardly ever work properly, even with emulation software.

I might work on such a port (an actual source port as opposed to a source mod) in the near future, but probably only after I've released my WAD project, since I don't have time for both at once.

Presently, the closest things to the DOS engines by id are prboom and doom95, for different reasons.

Fredrik said:

Yeah, that's WinDoom. Unfortunately it has a few bugs but I think you can get around them.

Windoom is early dosdoom but for windows, basically. But, like dosdoom, it has some changes.

I know everyone thinks I'm crazy, but I don't like change.
I even dislike the appearance of PrBoom, and even though I know you can change it back to the old Doom style, the thought of it being there just doesn't agree with me.

I just think there should be at least one port that fixes the bugs in Doom and allows higher resolutions, but changes nothing. That's all!
No fancy colors, no Quake style menus, no dynamic lighting, no OpenGL support, no transparencies, no nothing... just vanilla-flavored Doom :)

Doom95, IMO, had the best front end I've seen. I don't care about support for more than one .wad at a time, because if someone doesn't know how to make wad without including all the content in one file, then I'll probably delete it as soon as I open the zip file :)
And I don't care what everyone else thinks about Doom95!