Question about "room on room"

[johnfulgor]

Hello,
I'm trying to create a new level to play with vavoom. In a prevoius post, I was told that the original Doom does not support "room on room"; reading about Vavoom I've discovered that it really does. Now I'm wondering which editor should I use to create this "enhanced" wads ...
Can you help me?
Thanks!

[maggot202]

I'd say "for all your doom mapping, use doom builder". It has a lot of configurations that are special to almost every existing port, so vavoom should be there. Although i must ask some things:

1. Why vavoom? As far as i know, it's a bit obscure port, why not choose GZdoom or Eternity, they have 3D floor capabilities as well and are much more popular (remember that mapping should be for the public. If you map for yourself, your map has no purpose).

2. Do you know how to make 3D floors on vavoom?

3. Why do you want to make 3D floors? Remember that they are only an aesthetic tool, and it won't matter if you have thousands of them if your map looks or plays like crap. Plus, there are drop dead gorgeous maps out there that don't use 3D floors (I'd recommend playing Ultimate simplicity and trying to learn something).

[Gez]

Vavoom has 3D floor support, same as GZDoom. Eternity doesn't. Instead, Eternity uses linked portals. A completely different approach.

Relevant links:
http://zdoom.org/wiki/Sector_Set3dFloor
http://www.vavoom-engine.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sector_Set3DFloor
http://eternity.youfailit.net/index.php?title=Linked_portals


For creating the illusion of RoR, you can use simple portals. It's supported by all above ports, as well as ZDoom:
http://zdoom.org/wiki/Transfer_Heights
http://eternity.youfailit.net/index.php?title=Portals

There are also hacky ways to create the illusion in the original Doom engine, but it's usually broken in OpenGL renderers, so I'd not advise them.

[DooMAD]

maggot202 said:

Why vavoom? As far as i know, it's a bit obscure port, why not choose GZdoom or Eternity, they have 3D floor capabilities as well and are much more popular (remember that mapping should be for the public. If you map for yourself, your map has no purpose).

Says who? A person's reasons for creating a map or their choice of port are entirely up to them. If people happen to like the map then that's just a bonus.

[Creaphis]

If Graf Zahl were here he'd probably point out that Vavoom's 3D floors are more awkward to use and edit than GZDoom's.

[deathbringer]

EDGE also has 3D floors but is described by DW users as a "third world" source port that "always crashes", "doesn't save" and "has no multiplayer", because they last tried it in 2001. It's also super-easy to create extra weapons, monsters and fun effects in.

Doom Legacy also has 3D floors but hasn't been updated for years and has become less and less stable as operating systems have moved on. Also the creators are arrogant stuck-up pricks.

Also having 3D floors in your wad doesn't automatically make it good. I remember somebody's hyped-up wad which had really plain 3D platforms in a few rooms which a bunch of idiots went crazy for, when actually it was ugly and crap.

[maggot202]

DooMAD said:

Says who? A person's reasons for creating a map or their choice of port are entirely up to them. If people happen to like the map then that's just a bonus.

Says me. The port of choice obviously is up to the person, a guy could, for example, try to create a map for JDoom just to learn how the XG system works and such, but i firmly believe that the map should be created for the public. Maybe you could say that a poem, a painting or a piece of music could be created just to express the author's creativity, and that's fine, but when you consider a game, an interactive thing, it loses it's purpose if nobody interacts with it.

[Gez]

Good point about EDGE, I always forget it. It's not as bad as its reputation could lead one to presume. Last version I tried was 1.31 (2008, not 2001) and I liked how, for example, it had an excellent imitation of the fuzz effect on the spectres. As for Legacy, I didn't forget it but chose not to mention it since it's dead.

maggot202 said:

Says me.

You're saying that as if there was no public for Vavoom or Doomsday/JDoom.

[maggot202]

Gez said:

You're saying that as if there was no public for Vavoom or Doomsday/JDoom.

I didn't mean that, i'm just saying that they're less popular ports than (g)zdoom, so there are a lot less wads made for those ports than wad made for (g)zdoom. I must admit that i haven't used vavoom at all (i once installed it, but that was in the time when i was trying every port i could get). As for jdoom, it was the first port i used, and the only wads that i found for it in my time were "The exile" (a superb example of mapping. It was supposed to be a megawad, but afaik, only the first map got completed and released), and doom 64 absolution, altough that was a standalone game using an old version of doomsday, so after a while stopped using it because i was pretty much confined to vanilla doom wads.

[esselfortium]

"Creating a map for the public" is great and all, but what the hell difference does it make whether you make a great map for a popular sourceport or an equally great map for a more obscure one, if you're taking advantage of the features of that sourceport to benefit the creation of your map? I'm currently working on several major projects that aren't compatible with ZDoom-based ports, and I sure hope the community will still consider them worth their time. :P

[Graf Zahl]

Gez said:

You're saying that as if there was no public for Vavoom or Doomsday/JDoom.

For Vavoom, not really. Just have a look at the forum. There's a bit of activity but not much.

And you can't deny that it's probably the least popular of the major ports. At least that's the impression I get from looking at the comments Vavoom projects get in general.

The engine has resolved the biggest issues that were pointed out repeatedly here though.

However, I never had problems making Vavoom-based maps run on GZDoom. Normally these needed a bit of work though because Vavoom allows for some odd project organization and several projects I've seen went that route. But it's definitely possible to do a project that runs on both ports.

[maggot202]

esselfortium said:

"Creating a map for the public" is great and all, but what the hell difference does it make whether you make a great map for a popular sourceport or an equally great map for a more obscure one, if you're taking advantage of the features of that sourceport to benefit the creation of your map? I'm currently working on several major projects that aren't compatible with ZDoom-based ports, and I sure hope the community will still consider them worth their time. :P

I'm begining to believe that i've been misunderstood on my first question. I never meant to tell johnfulgor that he shouldn't use vavoom because of it's obscurity, i was only asking why he intended to use it (since it seemed to me that the guy was only recently getting into doom mapping, and was choosing vavoom just because it was the first port that he found that offered 3D floors), so any answer would've done, "because i'm a bit of an unusual guy, so i'm not going with the masses", "because my cousin told me that mapping for vavvom is 1337", "because i like it's shinyness" even "JUST BECAUSE! MIND YOUR OWN F***ING BUSINESS MAN!". Any of those would've done, but it seemed important to me that a new guy knew why he was getting into something. Not knowing this is a major source of quitting at many things, some not as trivial as making wads - marriages, university, jobs, etc.