Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Doom Marine

BSP vs Zennode

Recommended Posts

To anyone who knows the workings of nodes, can you tell me the advantages/disadvatages of BSP and Zennode? And if I had an extremely large map with many sidedefs, vertexes, and sectors... should I use BSP or Zennode to render?

Share this post


Link to post

It depends on what you're doing; I personally prefer ZenNode because it avoids VPOs more often.

Share this post


Link to post

My experience is this.

If it works Zennode produces by far the best nodes of all node builders. Unfortunately in a lot of cases it crashes or aborts. I used BSP a long time ago and at least the older versions had massive problems to create correct nodes for a lot of levels. I don't know whether this has been fixed. Another node builder you may want to try is ZDBSP. So far I haven't seen any problems with it but the nodes created by it are significantly larger than the ones created by Zennode.

Share this post


Link to post

in my experience zennode has always worked best (yes, better than zdbsp too), but of course if zennode doesn't work quite right you can always try something else.

Share this post


Link to post

Zennode is definitely better. I used Doom Builder to test some maps and of course it needed to update the nodes. Anyway, I noticed that with bsp-w32 that some monsters weren't able to climb stairs or move through some normal sectors but with zennode everything worked fine. In fact now, I run every wad I have through zennode when I play it the first time. FYI, this is the 1.1 version found on the zennode website and not the version 1.0 on the idgames archive.

Share this post


Link to post

I've never had any problems with WadAuthor's internal builder, except when I'm dealing with GL ports. Every once in awhile I build a GL version using glBSP, just to see how it looks in GL. But unfortunately the GL nodes tack an extra MB or so to my currently 24-map wad.

Share this post


Link to post
Cyb said:

everyone always forgets about warm :/



Warm is my second choice for a node builder. But I only use it if Zennode fails for some reason.

Share this post


Link to post

The worst nodesbuilder I ever used was DoomCads internal nodesbuilder.... slow......and buggy as hell. Thanks to Marc Rousseau for ZenNode!

Share this post


Link to post

I've never used any other BSP proggy other than DeepBSP. Works for me....

Share this post


Link to post

Zennode 1.1.0 is the best for me, as it's quick and you can skip the reject build to save a lot of time during map construction. And it works great with WadAuthor. The only drawback is that it does not like vanilla 3D bridges.

Share this post


Link to post

ZDBSP is tweaked to go with the engine so it is best. There was once three screenshots showing three different nodebuilders, I think they were DeepBSP, Zennode and ZDBSP, and only ZDBSP "fixed" a slime (well FLOOR5_3 or so) trail.

Share this post


Link to post
Doom Dude said:

The worst nodesbuilder I ever used was DoomCads internal nodesbuilder.... slow......and buggy as hell.

Haha yes, that nodebuilder is a complete joke. But in a way that's good, since it lead me to get used to superior external node builders.

Hirogen2 said:

ZDBSP is tweaked to go with the engine so it is best.

Huh, who said anything about using any ports? And in my experience ZenNode does do a better job, although it can vary in some cases. I've seen things that ZenNode can fix and ZDBSP can't as well.

Share this post


Link to post

Zennode usually, although recently it's started to piss me off by crashing often, so I have Doom Builder set to use BSP at the moment.

Share this post


Link to post

Hmm, mostly DeepBSP and Zennode 1.0.6, but zennode breaks my 3d bridges.

Share this post


Link to post
SlayeR said:

Zennode usually, although recently it's started to piss me off by crashing often

it only does that for me with small maps.

Share this post


Link to post

zdbsp's primary draw is that it's aware of polyobjects and can stop bleeding where other builders, including zennode, can't. it can also build gl nodes (I can't think of any builder that can build both gl and std nodes) and in the future it will be able to build a new format of compressed nodes that will be useable by ogl and std rendering engines (zdoom only of course). but essentially if you're making a zdoom (or hexen) map, zdbsp is your best choice by far

Share this post


Link to post

sure I could use zennode for a zdoom map with no polys if I want a nodes builder that crashes and aborts a lot.

Share this post


Link to post

It only does that if your map has less than 5 sectors. In which case, I recommend you don't map at all. ZenNode tends to leave less slime trails then ZDBSP, in my experience.

Share this post


Link to post
Cyb said:

zdbsp's primary draw is that it's aware of polyobjects and can stop bleeding where other builders, including zennode, can't. it can also build gl nodes (I can't think of any builder that can build both gl and std nodes) and in the future it will be able to build a new format of compressed nodes that will be useable by ogl and std rendering engines (zdoom only of course). but essentially if you're making a zdoom (or hexen) map, zdbsp is your best choice by far

GLBSP builds both regular and GL nodes - explained in the docs - should be a default. Guess I can see his reason for not defaulting the way he did.

Biggest thing that pisses me off about ZDBSP is that it really screws up 3D bridges. Also does not work well with GL ports if you use GLBSP to derive the GL nodes from (again read the docs).

Seems to be concocted in combination with ZDOOM code to work well with its renderer only.

I use zennode, deepbsp and glbsp depending on the level or port. Sometimes zdbsp for for ZDOOM only. Too many issues with it.

Share this post


Link to post

FireBastard said:
GLBSP builds both regular and GL nodes - explained in the docs - should be a default. Guess I can see his reason for not defaulting the way he did.


Ah, I wasn't aware glbsp could build both. I know zdoomgl can recognise a different nodes name (GL_NODES, GL_SEGS etc) so it's actually possible to build both regular and gl nodes in the same map, though I don't know if there's any support for this in other ogl renderers.

FireBastard said:
Biggest thing that pisses me off about ZDBSP is that it really screws up 3D bridges. Also does not work well with GL ports if you use GLBSP to derive the GL nodes from (again read the docs).

Seems to be concocted in combination with ZDOOM code to work well with its renderer only.


Well that's no surprise as ZDBSP is an external version of ZDoom's internal builder. Its primary purpose is to be used with ZDoom maps where vanilla 3D bridges are totally obsoleted (either via 3d bridge things or with Boom's deep water special, transfer_heights, in fact even building a map for Boom (which the majority of popular source ports support) using vanilla style 3d bridges isn't necessary, and any maps that do have them will of course have nodes built with something else), so I don't think that's really an issue for ZDoom only maps which are obviously the main intent of ZDBSP. If I was making a vanilla map (which has a probability of around zero at this point) I would use by old favorite nodes builder, warm and not ZDBSP.

Share this post


Link to post
Cyb said:

Ah, I wasn't aware glbsp could build both.

It builds both types for either type of use. IOW doesn't have to be OGL.

Cyb said:

Well that's no surprise as ZDBSP is an external version of ZDoom's internal builder.

Sure thing. The original question was about what node builder. That's a general question. Does him no good if it doesn't work for OTHER ports or stock DOOM.

When all is said and done, ZDBSP has some bugs that need some looking at :)

Don't think anything ever gets "obsolete" otherwise we couldn't play all those cool levels. Nuff said on that point.

Share this post


Link to post

Zennode crashes? I had it abort a few times a long time ago but that was because of structural errors. Since then I've used it who knows how many times with no problems. I use it on every single DM wad I've played of 3DGamers and that's coming up on 300 wads and probably 400+ maps...

Then again that's just my experience so it'd probably be a good idea to have them all so you're ready for anything.

Share this post


Link to post

does anyone have any links to a good technical explanation of the slime trails bug and why it exists? it seems to be one of those bugs that is half in the nodes builder and half in the engine itself.

Share this post


Link to post
Rellik said:

Zennode crashes? I had it abort a few times a long time ago but that was because of structural errors. Since then I've used it who knows how many times with no problems. I use it on every single DM wad I've played of 3DGamers and that's coming up on 300 wads and probably 400+ maps...

Then again that's just my experience so it'd probably be a good idea to have them all so you're ready for anything.


Zennode crashes a lot. Most of the time it's the reject builder so it's not that bad. I have seen some WADs Zennode doesn't like. For some of them it just aborts, sometimes it crashes and sometimes it writes unusable nodes. Problems occur mostly with large and complex levels.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×