GAMEINFO - ZDoom's special control lump

As some of you will know, I'm currently in the process of rewriting the game recognition process in Doomsday so as to make it much easier to support new IWADs, based on any existing game logic module.

I'm currently looking at the ZDoom docs for the GAMEINFO lump and scratching my head trying to determine what it is actually good for. I understand why it is necessary so far as the NOSPRITERENAME flag is concerned. The startup screen stuff seems out of place (no problem, I can ignore it). The IWAD and LOAD fields however just don't seem to fit.

It just doesn't make much sense to me. Surely the GAMEINFO lump will in all likelihood be present within the IWAD that it will reference using the IWAD field so what is the point?

See docs here: http://zdoom.org/wiki/GAMEINFO

It's not a lump for IWADs, it's a lump for mods. If you want to see a live example, Stronghold uses it. ZDoom will scan for GAMEINFO lumps in the files it is being asked to load (starting with the last and going backward), and if one is found, proceed with the information herein. If there is an iwad indicated, it will be the one that's used. Otherwise, you get the IWAD selection box.

Still doesn't make sense to me. So the whole point in this lump is to avoid having the user manually select the game from that dialog? Why does ZDoom need a control lump for that given it's all-games-in-one model? Or is this meant to tie a mod to a particular IWAD?

Yes. There were many people confused by the fact KDiZD was not for Doom II, for example. It can be used that way to preselect an IWAD other than Doom2 (for example for a Final Doom project). The most important part though is the LOAD key, so that for example if a project relies on an external texture pack (e.g. gothictx), then it can be put here.

The startup stuff is there for TCs.

Ah I see. Rather a poor choice of name then imo.

I would suggest someone add this information to the wiki as the name and feature-set led me to believe it was something very different.

Yeah, there is confusion possible with the GameInfo section of MAPINFO.

Essentially, the GAMEINFO lump is something that is processed before initialization and affects how the init goes; whereas the GameInfo section is loaded normally. By its very design, the GAMEINFO lump cannot change a lot of things.

I suppose a name like LOADINFO or something like that would have been clearer and less ambiguous.

The name "GAMEINFO" suggests it defines info about a game (e.g., DOOM, Heretic etc) not a mod (e.g., KDiZD). Hence my confusion when I saw what looked to be file load directives.

Sorry about the name. I just went with what Blzut3 suggested long before it was implemented.

Yes, LOADINFO might probably have been better.