The worst part of editing in Vanilla

[StalkerZHS]

On 12/25/2018 at 11:16 AM, Linguica said:

Now imagine mapping in the 1990s when the only way to check was to load the map and run around waiting for it to crash...

 

Imagine mapping in the 90's, where nobody knew how to make a map complex enough for that in the first place

[Gez]

It's actually quite simple to make a map that crashes even with 90s software. Here's an example from 1994 demonstrating how a simple 12x12 grid creates problems.

https://legacy.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/g-i/gridwad

[boris]

16 hours ago, holaareola said:

Yeah, I find visplanes and the savegame buffer overflow to be the two vanilla limits that really encumber you.  I remember getting an editor on disk from someone when I didn't have the net as a kid and so couldn't even look up what a visplane was. Too many lines? Too many sectors? Knew it was something to do with one of them, but it just entailed a horrible loop of trial and error on my 386. I think I'd tried to build a pyramid with too many steps.

According to the Doom Wiki article on visplane overflows their cause wasn't fully understood until the source release, so having internet access might not even have helped you back then.

[ukiro]

That’s indeed the case. The most educated guesses on visplane behavior came from Lee Killough.

 

Compared to today, vanilla mapping was most restrained by the tools themselves—minutes to build nodes on a large map, no way to spawn in a specific spot without manually moving the player1 start, calculating ALL offsets manually with no visual feedback, no curve or stair builder tools, no copy/paste, no rotate/scale, no “visplane explorer” or similar, and so on. When you play 94-97 maps, keep in mind they were done despite all this. Making vanilla stuff today is easier by an incredible degree. 

[Koko Ricky]

This reminds me of DEEP, if any of you grandpas out there remember it. In the late 90s, it was a pretty hot editor, something of an all-in-one kind of thing, even more extensive than Doom Builder. It wasn't great (thus no one using it today), but it did have a 3D preview, albeit an extremely crude one. It used flat shaded graphics and let you move about in it, though it was so slow and abstract looking that I found it easier to just test it in-game. I didn't touch editors for more than a decade afterward because I just found the whole process too confusing. If it wasn't for all the hand-holding that Doom Builder and the like do, I wouldn't have returned to modding.

[JadingTsunami]

3 hours ago, GoatLord said:

This reminds me of DEEP, if any of you grandpas out there remember it. In the late 90s, it was a pretty hot editor, something of an all-in-one kind of thing, even more extensive than Doom Builder. It wasn't great (thus no one using it today), but it did have a 3D preview, albeit an extremely crude one. It used flat shaded graphics and let you move about in it, though it was so slow and abstract looking that I found it easier to just test it in-game. I didn't touch editors for more than a decade afterward because I just found the whole process too confusing. If it wasn't for all the hand-holding that Doom Builder and the like do, I wouldn't have returned to modding.

 

Oh yes. DeeP (and DeeP97) outclassed just about every other editor once it arrived.

 

If I remember there was a DeePBSP nodebuilder included and later DeePBOOM which added BOOM support.

[CodeImp]

On 12/25/2018 at 4:55 PM, DJVCardMaster said:

Seriously, fuck visplanes, I have to reload the Visplane Explorer every 10 sectors to make sure everything is OK.

 

For plain Doom Builder 2 (not sure about any of the forks) there is a Visplane Explorer plugin which shows the visplane heatmap inside the editor with 1 click on a button (or a key which you can map). See http://doombuilder.com/index.php?p=plugins

 

The plugin might not work on DB2 forks due to their changes though.

[Doom_Dude]

On 12/27/2018 at 5:11 PM, Gez said:

DoomCAD had a primitive 3D view that was just a wireframe mode and it took a while to compute it.

Yeah I found that to be pretty useless so I never really used it.

 

On 12/28/2018 at 12:30 PM, Empyre said:

I used DoomCAD, but I don't remember a 3D mode. Maybe that feature was added in later versions. I used the very first version that supported Doom 2, which was bundled with the Doom Hacker's Guide book. Or, maybe I don't remember it because it was so long ago.

The Doom Hackers Guide! I found a copy on sale for a couple bucks back in early 99 and that's how I got started with Doom level design. I can't remember if 3D mode was in both 5.1 and 6.1 or if it was an upgrade in 6.1. I mainly used 5.1 way back when.

 

On 12/28/2018 at 9:16 PM, Linguica said:

Yeah I think people forget what it was like to be working with a genuinely old and slow computer. I distinctly remember sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for a node builder to finish what was a relatively small level by modern standards. It was not something you just did on a whim.

That is so true. I remember DoomCad would display the building of the nodes so at least there was something to watch.

 

 

On 12/28/2018 at 9:28 PM, Fuzzball said:

I've heard tales of using a calculator for things like texture alignment too

Oh yeah, I had forgotten that was a thing. Years ago a fellow on Newdoom had posted about a program he coded that figured those alignment values out. I forget what that was called now. Oh well.

 

On 12/29/2018 at 11:36 PM, Rhebiz said:

Does anyone know if any of these old doom editors work on modern windows versions? Just want to see how its like back then.

I do know Doomcad is a 16 bit program and Windows 10, 64 bit and won't run it.  Never had issues with win 7 or 8. I had started work a couple years back on a map using DoomCad just for the hell of it. Then I updated my comp and haven't been able to touch it since the program won't run. Hell, maybe I'll throw a windows 7 comp together for something to do and get that thing running again.

 

5 hours ago, CodeImp said:

 

For plain Doom Builder 2 (not sure about any of the forks) there is a Visplane Explorer plugin which shows the visplane heatmap inside the editor with 1 click on a button (or a key which you can map). See http://doombuilder.com/index.php?p=plugins

 

The plugin might not work on DB2 forks due to their changes though.

The visplane explorer crashes in GZDoom Builder Bugfix 64 bit. I think I read that one of the .dlls is the issue there.

 

 

Edited December 31, 2018 by Doom_Dude

[Linguica]

On 12/30/2018 at 1:31 AM, StalkerZHS said:

Imagine mapping in the 90's, where nobody knew how to make a map complex enough for that in the first place

 

I'll go back in time to 1996 and tell myself that about this map I made that was released with remaining visplane overflows then

 

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

On 12/29/2018 at 9:08 PM, Doomkid said:

All these people saying visplanes are the worst thing about vanilla have CLEARLY never tried adding custom sprites.

The thing that boggles me is how, having this as a cautionary tale, the BUILD engine was better and yet at the same time almost as dumb in a different way: anything in the .ART files could be a sprite, texture, floor/ceiling, whatever, replace stuff as you please.  Wait, what, load individual changed tiles from a patch file while leaving your core files untouched?  No, no, silly, you have to replace the whole files, even for texture changes that the Doom engine would have handled just fine as a PWAD.  Apparently in BUILD circles someone made an ARTDIFF tool that does something similar to DEUSF where you can distribute just the changed stuff and have the tool insert it... essentially leaving things at pretty much a similar point in either engine.

 

Then you have Quake: "LOL, just insert the textures used into every single map file, then we never have to worry about patching them in.  Even if that leaves a zillion redundant copies in the map set!" but at least that avoided the other problems.

 

There were probably "good reasons" for all of those engines doing these things the way they did but it's certainly a bit headscratching in retrospect.

[boris]

2 hours ago, Doom_Dude said:

The visplane explorer crashes in GZDoom Builder Bugfix 64 bit. I think I read that one of the .dlls is the issue there.

The problem is that the solution doesn't include the project for vpo.dll, so it always embedds the existing vpo.dll, which is 32 bit. I assume the reason for that is that Visual C# Express, the free IDE, couldn't compile projects for other languages, i.e. the vpo_dll project, which is C++.

 

Since then Microsoft has release the (also free for non-commerical use (?)) Visual Studio Community Edition, which can compile projects of different languages in the same solution, so there's not really a reason for GZDB-BF not doing so. In fact it's really trivial to get it up and running, there are not even code changes needed:

 

[Vermil]

This thread brings back many memories of editing in the old days. Though I only made maps in the old days so I still missed out on a lot of frustration :p

[DJVCardMaster]

7 hours ago, CodeImp said:

 

For plain Doom Builder 2 (not sure about any of the forks) there is a Visplane Explorer plugin which shows the visplane heatmap inside the editor with 1 click on a button (or a key which you can map). See http://doombuilder.com/index.php?p=plugins

 

The plugin might not work on DB2 forks due to their changes though.

Yes, I'm aware of that, I personally like to use the "Visplane Explorer" software that I have since I can easily simulate the map with a convenient "opened doors" option, too see if some instances when there are too many doors open showing many subsectors can trigger the limitation.

[Koko Ricky]

Not entirely related, but I tried to get into Quake editing about 20 years ago, with a program called QUARK. Shockingly, it was a pay product with a demo version. Did anyone ever try to pull that stunt with Doom editors? 

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

6 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

Not entirely related, but I tried to get into Quake editing about 20 years ago, with a program called QUARK. Shockingly, it was a pay product with a demo version. Did anyone ever try to pull that stunt with Doom editors? 

DeeP and DCK had shareware versions with reduced features (DeeP being the more sharply limited of the two-it imposed an artificial size limit on the levels you could save).  WadAuthor had a 30-day expiration on the shareware version.

[Koko Ricky]

And yet people in the community were mad that Team TNT made money off Final Doom.

[Linguica]

6 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

And yet people in the community were mad that Team TNT made money off Final Doom.

 

There is nothing wrong with a programmer charging money for an application, especially one that is updated and supported, even if that app is a level editor for Doom. Jack Vermeulen took a lot of shit for charging for DeepSea, and he was ultimately swimming against the tide, but he still had a loyal userbase who financially supported his product.

[joepallai]

On ‎12‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 10:36 PM, Rhebiz said:

Does anyone know if any of these old doom editors work on modern windows versions? Just want to see how its like back then.

 

Wadauthor still works on modern windows and I occasionally still use it for certain things (mostly error checking, printing out maps to examine/work off of when I'm not home, and I like the item placement better than Doombuilder's).

 

 

I remember during the nodebuilding/playtesting loading time of what became "Morsel" (map03 Endgame) on my old 486 that I could chain-smoke two cigarettes while waiting.  (I also didn't have sound during playtesting and didn't know about -nomonsters so I had to be on my toes during the playtesting phase.)

[Doom_Dude]

I just remembered that DoomCad had a decent curved stair mode. I've used it a few times even after I started using Doom Builder.

 

DoomCad represented the placement of things with dots. One time I thought I placed a couple torches in a room but when I went to test the map I was surprised by a couple cyberdemons. Good times.

 

Also when Legacy included 3D floors I remember adding the linetypes to DoomCad's .ini file so I could make 3d floors. So after linetype 141, I added '142=unused', etc... until I got to 281=Legacy_3d_Floor_Shadow and there was some others like 301=Legacy_3d_Water_Translucent. All the other linetypes I could have filled in too instead of having them say 'unused' in the editor but never got around to it. I was damned happy that it worked at the time.

[elend]

I'd happily pay money for GzDoomBuilder actually. Is there a way to donate? Gotta check this shit out and send a bunch of moneys. It's that good.

[pcorf]

Fun and challenging days indeed. I was aware about Visplanes so yeah you needed to be careful with the amount of detail and make sure there were not too many variances in light levels in detailed areas with different sector heights. And yes, manual texture alignment yes I worked that calculator overtime for sure back in the 1990's. I also used Doomcad 5.1 and 6.1, an editor that would easily crash on you if you typed in a mistake when doing light levels or sidedef texture offsets. It no longer works with current operating systems but DB makes up for that.

[Soundblock]

The arrival of undo is probably the most potent editor denominator for me, since those days. The 3D preview can stop you guessing in 2D for long stretches, which at the very least was fun at the time - even a reccommended strat to build great maps, by some of the contemporary luminaries (Levelord, and others).

 

Deep was too feature laden to be useful imo, you needed a decent Pentium just to visualise half the visual ‘aides’. It never ran smooth on any of my 90’s PCs and i wasn’t running 2nd rate hardware. I wonder what the best received wad using that editor might be though (anyone?). I was impressed with the bells & whistles look of it, but at the end of the day didn’t find it practical. If the Deep BSP had any points over BSP, i never found out about it.

 

DEU (incl. subset DETH) and DCK were largely the goto’s for most serious Doom mappers I personally dealt with in the 90’s (Sailor, Sleep, Dario, Mustaine, ED teammates). Framerate was a bigger hickup than the payment schedule (which many found not to be in the spirit of Doom’s then amazing ‘freeness’). The first wad editor i used, DoomEd («It’s a Doom editor!» for Windows), also had a payment option in the text file, but i don’t think the author ever finished it, or managed a stable release.

 

I very much enjoyed Doomkid’s YT vid trying to boot all the pre-builder eds up, and hope he doesn’t give up on getting’em working again! Curious as to how ‘blind editing’ might be these days...

 

Oh, and knowing «how to make maps complex enough» was never what held anyone back i think. Max’ed out the vis in the first room before even starting to branch out a few times and had to ditch city vistas, valleys, board-by-board woodworks and far seeing watch tower ideas pretty early on in 94, before getting to grips with what was semi-realistically feasible.

[Pegleg]

5 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

DCK had shareware versions with reduced features

 

That is, in fact, what drove me to DEU. I loved DCK 2.6, which was freeware and completely unfettered. Then they released DCK 3.6 or 3.62 as shareware and I refused to work with a hamstrung copy like that, so I switched.

 

As for the OP, visplane limits can be a bit irritating, but just scale back the detail or the size of the area (which is more likely to have more features the larger it gets). Ultimately, visplanes are manageable without necessarily crushing your creative soul--Gothic 99 was vanilla and it had enough detail to lag computers without crashing them due to visplane overflows.

 

3D mode is pretty handy, true, but I have distinct memories of visualizing level geometry. Granted, some of them were "let me see what happens when I step off a 10000 unit high ledge," but most were more complicated than that. And the original designers are on the record as saying their minds' eyes were their 3D mode (not their actual words, but that was the gist).

[Koko Ricky]

I feel silly for criticizing paying for editors when I'm also an advocate for modders generating income.

[esselfortium]

9 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Gothic 99 was vanilla and it had enough detail to lag computers without crashing them due to visplane overflows.

Gothic 99 was definitely not vanilla, lol

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

11 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Gothic 99 was vanilla and it had enough detail to lag computers without crashing them due to visplane overflows.

I disagree.

The entire map would be completely black if I set the viewer to Drawsegs.

The only annoying part about mapping for vanilla is the restrictions. It makes it more difficult to do large areas because you have to juggle visplanes and drawsegs, which can be remarkably stringent when you don't want them to be.

[Dark Pulse]

On 12/31/2018 at 1:04 PM, boris said:

The problem is that the solution doesn't include the project for vpo.dll, so it always embedds the existing vpo.dll, which is 32 bit. I assume the reason for that is that Visual C# Express, the free IDE, couldn't compile projects for other languages, i.e. the vpo_dll project, which is C++.

 

Since then Microsoft has release the (also free for non-commerical use (?)) Visual Studio Community Edition, which can compile projects of different languages in the same solution, so there's not really a reason for GZDB-BF not doing so. In fact it's really trivial to get it up and running, there are not even code changes needed:

 

Would you mind slapping up a download of that for those of us using the 64-bit builds?

[Hiiammike]

Mostly the ability to not make maps you know that time in wad maker's life where he just can't continue making wads or maps for his wads because there's something in real life fucking with him preventing him from continuing to make maps. This happening to me right now and i am sick of it zoom it is not my first wad but when i was making wads it was really hard to continue and think about real life things or other matters but i asure if this ever comes to you you will be able to get over it. 

[Pegleg]

OK. So Gothic 99 was designed for use with Boom. My mistake. However, in my defense, the Doomwiki lists Gothic 99's compatibility as vanilla (or did, as of the time of my writing).

 

My points about limits being manageable still stands, though. You do have to keep track of it, but it's manageable.

[boris]

3 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Would you mind slapping up a download of that for those of us using the 64-bit builds?

That's really something @ZZYZX should add to the official builds.