linedef type 242 vs self referencing sidedefs

In my travels, I've noticed that there are a lot of maps out there that claim that they are made for boom or compatible ports that use the self referencing sidedef trick (deep water, invisible floor). This doesn't make sense to me because linedef type 242 can accomplish all of that without relying on any rendering quirks. Even BOOMEDIT.WAD, a showcase of boom features, while it demos the "242 as invisible floor" effect, in a different part of the same map uses self referencing sidedefs as invisible floor instead.

It's a bit depressing at times, as such effects invariably look wrong in prboom gl mode, and I was wondering if anyone has any insight as to why people did it.

When you pair userfriendly map editors like Doom Builder 2 with, at Boom levels, obscure documentation in programmer-speak, you're bound to end up with some Phmls who can manage to make maps but do so by trial and error and understand close to nothing about the inner workings of the engine.

That's my best guess based on many of my own mapping errors, anyway.

Phml said:

When you pair userfriendly map editors like Doom Builder 2 with, at Boom levels, obscure documentation in programmer-speak, you're bound to end up with some Phmls who can manage to make maps but do so by trial and error and understand close to nothing about the inner workings of the engine.

That's my best guess based on many of my own mapping errors, anyway.

Fair enough. Makes sense that people would just continue to use what they already know.


I'm guilty of this too; in my lifetime I've released one map and one tech demo (both of which suck horribly, so don't go looking for them), and both of which use "classic" tricks in a situation where 242 would have worked. I don't remember at all why I did it though.

Put simply, ignorance. The 242 linedef thing is rather complicated to understand, and there are almost certainly dozens of tutorials out there explaining how to do the Vanilla-style trick.

Perhaps the one in boomedit.wad was added before the 242 linedef type was implemented?