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Megamur

Some random PrBoom questions.

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First of all, what exactly is the purpose of the -complevel parameter? Is it merely for playing back demos? Or does it actually alter the gameplay when playing? Like, if I set it to 1.9 compatibility, will the game now have the 1.9 behavior, with the Lost Soul bouncing and the old 666 sector tag behavior?

Secondly, is the original PrBoom dead, and PrBoom+ is its replacement? And can PrB+ be tweaked so it's basically pure vanilla in behavior, only without the limits? (E.g., you can play MAP27 of TNT in PrB+, and it will look and sound and play exactly like DOOM2.EXE, just without the visplane explosions.)

I'm just curious since I'm still using PrBoom 2.5.0, myself. I've been apprehensive about making the leap to PrB+ since I'm not interested in a lot of new engine features, and just want an engine that can be "vanilla limit-removing" and can also run ancient BOOM maps perfectly.

Thank you!

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Megamur said:

First of all, what exactly is the purpose of the -complevel parameter? Is it merely for playing back demos? Or does it actually alter the gameplay when playing?

It wouldn't play back demo correctly if it didn't alter the gameplay as appropriate, so...

Megamur said:

Secondly, is the original PrBoom dead, and PrBoom+ is its replacement?

Mostly. There's actually still some commits to the PrBoom source code (commits to /branches/prboom-plus-24/prboom2/ are for PrB+, commits to /trunk/prboom2/ are for PrB), but whether it'll ever give birth to a new version is unknown. PrBoom+ is reliably updated.

Megamur said:

And can PrB+ be tweaked so it's basically pure vanilla in behavior, only without the limits

Yeah, using a vanilla Doom complevel. There are different ones for Doom v1.2 (0), Doom v1.666 (1), Doom II v1.9 (2), Ultimate Doom (3) and Final Doom (4). It'll be just like vanilla except with much higher limits and without the crash-inducing bugs.

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-complevel is primarily intended for playing and recording demos, but I believe you can use it for actual game play too.

Can't really answer the other questions myself. I don't believe regular PrBoom is dead, but its development pace is.. glacial. I used to use PrBoom+ in the past but the overly bloated menus in it compared to regular PrBoom just made me go back :P

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chungy said:

I used to use PrBoom+ in the past but the overly bloated menus in it compared to regular PrBoom just made me go back :P

+1

I used Eternity Engine exclusively since it got new nice logo, but now zdoom is my favorite because of bunny.

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entryway said:

+1

I used Eternity Engine exclusively since it got new nice logo, but now zdoom is my favorite because of bunny.

Wait what? If they're your favorite and not PRBoom+, why do you work on PRBoom+ and not them?

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entryway doesn't work on PRBoom+, he works on PrBoom+.

He's also known to be sarcastic sometimes.

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I don't think PrBoom (trunk) is dead, but I'm the idiot who keeps making commits to it so I may be biased :-P

I think there's enough new stuff in trunk to warrant at least a point release, but then there's still a lot of missing features that plus has and trunk does not. Furthermore I can't do much besides commit code. I don't have sourceforge access to do releases or the knowledge of how to do them, and even if I had I can't do the Windows or Mac builds (honestly, nor would I want to)

So I just occasionally commit stuff that "scratches my own itches" and/or fixes obvious bugs that are easy to fix, in a futile gesture against the inevitable.

And yeah sometimes I wonder what the point is. I love entryway and what he does but I don't see the point in just copying it blindly. If we did that we might as well delete trunk entirely and put a note on the website "go and use plus instead, last one to leave turn off the lights". On the other hand Proff did once say trunk and plus should be much closer together than they are, and it is his project (especially so now cph has gone) so I don't know what to do.

fake edit: oh look at all those new posts that appeared when I pressed the preview button

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Just to be clear: -complevel is not for playing back demos. Well, it can be used, but is normally unnecessary or even harmful.

The program is clever enough to read the demo header and data format, consider the iwad that is being used, and set the compatibility level accordingly.

Only in very rare cases is it necessary to force a complevel for playback (e.g. Dosdoom .47 demos with spechits overflows). In other cases it is irrelevant or causes problems.

The -complevel parameter is for recording or for playing. I would urge people to use the -complevel in all cases (or to set it via the default_compatibility_level setting in the cfg). That saves you from bothering with the in-game menus for the individual compatibility settings, as -complevel takes care of them if you just want vanilla or Boom behaviour.

I view Prboom+ as the current line of development of the PrBoom project.

Megamur said:

Like, if I set it to 1.9 compatibility, will the game now have the 1.9 behavior, with the Lost Soul bouncing and the old 666 sector tag behavior?

Well yes, but note that "1.9 compatibility" is not a single compatibility level - Ultimate and Final are also versions of 1.9. But if you mean pre-ultimate Doom.exe/Doom2.exe version 1.9, then yes, -complevel 2 will give you all aspects of that behaviour. It has been extensively tested (I played back literally every demo I could find - yes this took months - and it works).

can PrB+ be tweaked so it's basically pure vanilla in behavior, only without the limits?

That is the purpose of the complevels. Many visual features that don't affect in-game behaviour are not covered by the complevels, but you can set these things via the menus however you like.

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I greatly appreciate all of the replies. It sounds like PrB+ would be worth looking into. Not that I'd be opposed to a new release of standard PrBoom, but it still has a few bugs here and there that PrB+ might've ironed out by now. (PrB 2.5.0 still has instances of Long Wall Error, of all things.)

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