So... why so many vanilla oriented projects?

[Gez]

ASD said:

I've recently thought the opposite: Why are there so much limit removal nowadays?

Take a couple hours or days making a simple map just for fun. Nothing really great or really deserving to be uploaded somewhere. Just draw some lines, shape some sectors, experiment a bit with the map editor to see how you can do some stuff that you've liked in other maps.

Then load it in vanilla. Crash. Weee! Fun. Load it in your favorite source port (outside of ChocoDoom): works.

Working with limits just isn't fun. It can be challenging or interesting or whatever if you want to submit yourself to these constraints; but it's not fun.

[esselfortium]

Memfis said:

Ok, so there is at least some benefit from segs/visplanes limits (although it seems like they breed view-blocking pillars more than creativity, but whatever). What about tutti-fruttis, medusas, numeric overflow crashes? You can't possibly say that they're good things as well? Can't put certain textures in the middle - that's just stupid, right? Well, then you should at least switch to prboom-plus but use its IDRATE cheat to check the visplane and segs numbers. And maybe you could even exceed the limits a little in the areas where you really don't want to sacrifice anything (you will not be murdered for that, honest!). Unless you are really a frequent vanilla user, choosing to deal with stupid things like medusas is just masochism IMO.

Masochism? Not really. "Don't vertically tile <128 tall textures" and "don't use multipatch middle textures on 2-sided lines" are so completely predictable and avoidable, they're effectively a non-issue as soon as you're aware of their existence. I think medusa may have caused me about 30 seconds of grief at some point in 2005, but it's not at all difficult to work around. Besides, limit-removing doesn't necessarily account for fixing bugs like that, either.

Hell, it was still possible to get vertical tiling glitches on odd-sized textures in ZDoom until semi-recently, despite Boom having fixed it ages ago. I've found that regardless of the port I'm aiming a project for, I'm still almost guaranteed to run into some sort of hideous engine bugs putting restraints on it or otherwise being a nuisance in the course of development. (ZDoom's portal system, lol)

Anyway, I don't use PrBoom-Plus to begin with, but if I'm making a limit-removing project I'm sure as hell not going to want to have to check limits. When I'm mapping/modding for a source port, I like taking full advantage of its capabilities to the fullest extent I can. It's the same way when I'm mapping/modding for vanilla: the engine gives me a specific set of rules and features that I can't deviate from, and I get to see what I can do within them. Part of the enjoyment comes from putting the target engine through the wringer, and figuring out how to do cool things within the vanilla limits or whatever feature set I'm working with.

I've done the same with music and really enjoyed both the process and the experimentation it led to, and have been quite satisfied with the results. And going further, of course, composing MIDIs is also an exercise in creating something under harsh restrictions.

Gez said:

Take a couple hours or days making a simple map just for fun. Nothing really great or really deserving to be uploaded somewhere. Just draw some lines, shape some sectors, experiment a bit with the map editor to see how you can do some stuff that you've liked in other maps.

Then load it in vanilla. Crash. Weee! Fun. Load it in your favorite source port (outside of ChocoDoom): works.

Working with limits just isn't fun. It can be challenging or interesting or whatever if you want to submit yourself to these constraints; but it's not fun.

But the scenario you described isn't working with limits; you've described working without considering limits at all, then deciding after the fact that you want to run it in vanilla and being disappointed when you didn't get lucky enough to squeeze into the limits by sheer happenstance.

Consciously working with a set of limits to achieve something impressive within them can be quite fun if you're into that sort of thing.

BaronOfStuff said:

Because while it can be fun to work within the old limits every so often, they're also too strict for more ambitious projects to work/look as intended

Now this is just silly.

[printz]

I don't understand: what's with people's obsession with detail these days? Doesn't a bare sector consisting of a room suffice? On any new wads I keep seeing borders and cracks and light gradients and so on. Why not just limit yourself to the level of detail from Knee-Deep Doom 1?

[esselfortium]

printz said:

I don't understand: what's with people's obsession with detail these days? Doesn't a bare sector consisting of a room suffice? On any new wads I keep seeing borders and cracks and light gradients and so on. Why not just limit yourself to the level of detail from Knee-Deep Doom 1?

Because not every project calls for that, and a lot of people enjoy or prefer doing more in-depth visual design? Why not?

[valkiriforce]

My question is why does anyone play Doom anymore?

[Scypek2]

About co-op puzzles, I remember when I played co-op on Zdaemon and came to the point where one player had to wait next to a closet with a switch, and the second player had to hit a distant switch opening the closet for a second. The switch inside would open another closet, and so on. Unfortunately, about 5 players I played with were too dumb to got the concept. Seriously.

ASD said:

I've recently thought the opposite: Why are there so much limit removal nowadays?

Because mappers had to progress along with ports at some point? This question might've been "the opposite" in about 1999 or so, but not today, I think.

[NiGHTMARE]

Evolution said:

Phml: lulz

Scypek2: Yeah, the STARTS are there. The gameplay often isn't. Narrow areas built with single-player in mind, no puzzles requiring other players, etc.

I would say that narrow areas make for poor single player maps, too.

[Phml]

Phml: lulz

What's "lulz" about my reply? If this is because I named one thing you enjoy as an issue on my end, again, I stress this is nothing but my personal preference, not a value judgement. If you meant to imply my maps are irrelevant or something, fair enough, you'd be entitled to that opinion; still, perhaps I'm fooling myself thinking there might be something to what I said, but I think it kind of makes sense generally speaking.

One of the greatest things about Doom today is how customisable it is. You have people playing in vanilla, in ports, with various settings and mods. There is an optimal Doom experience for every kind of player out there. In SP, this works well. I can make a Boom map I play and test in GlBoom+, and someone else can play that same map in ZDoom with jumping, and yet another person might play it in GZDoom with Brutal Doom. Three different ways to enjoy the same map.

In co-op, however, it's harder to get to that ideal experience as easily; and even when it is possible, there's no guarantee other people will want to play the same way. Here the endless customisation is a hurdle as much as a strength. What's the common ground between climbing towers with rocket jumps, slaughtering thousands of monsters or roleplaying an anthropomorphic animal (list obviously not exhaustive)? With so much variation in game styles, common ground is harder to find, and it's less likely that acceptable middle point is going to be close to the personalized SP experience any given player might have.

[myk]

I don't think there are "so many" vanilla projects. There's a healthy amount, in addition to projects for other standards or engines. The amounts for each may fluctuate somewhat historically for different technical and cultural reasons, but the good thing is that the community keeps them going. And vanilla is the father of them all, so its subsistence mainly attests that we have a strong community, that keeps developing but doesn't forget its roots.

Memfis said:
Yeah, of course it encourages clean design without useless little details and more substantial approach (not sure if that makes sense), but... Do you really need the visplane/segs limit to take that approach? Maybe it's easier to just say to yourself "I'm going to make limit removing maps with relatively simple detailing" and then do so? I did that and mapping is a lot more fun now.

That's certainly an available mapping option, but it's different because the "simple detailing" within limit removal is more subjective, and arguably or mainly based on what vanilla produces.

BaronOfStuff said:
A good reason to buy a PC, yeah.

Sure, a Tablet PC!

esselfortium said:
I think medusa may have caused me about 30 seconds of grief at some point in 2005, but it's not at all difficult to work around. Besides, limit-removing doesn't necessarily account for fixing bugs like that, either.

And with that in mind, an author, who is familiar with the map he or she is making, will have an easier time fixing a medusa than most players.

[Feniks]

Death Egg said:

I do it so more people who don't use anything but the original Doom can have a chance to play it. Plus that just sort of seemed like a project that would be best following those limits.

I'd say that's the right attitude but, sadly, many mappers fail to perceive it. Aren't they just selfish or short-sighted?

I can understand that advanced source ports (PrBoom+ also counts) are highly popular in the Doom community, but the point is that there is not a small number of people from outside the community who also play Doom and mostly use the original executable with DosBox. They don't even bother trying any ports. I've noticed that it usually gets overlooked on here.

I know nobody really cares but there are people whose target engine is Doom2.exe or Chocolate Doom and they feel most comfortable with those. Funny thing is, it's so easy to get ridiculed for wanting a mapper to strip down advanced features for the sake of vanilla compatibility, but ZDoom players can freely bitch and moan about Zdoom-incompatibility of some maps... Hell, a lot of authors still cater for them even though their work was intended to be for vanilla or Boom...

Unlike projects for (G)ZDoom or Boom, vanilla wads can usually be played by just about anyone: Doom2.exe users, Doom95 users, Chocolate Doom users, PrBoom+ users, GZDoom users, etc, etc. It doesn't restrict anybody and that's absolutely great.

By the way, Memfis, IIRC you called for making some ZDoom megawad limit-removing because it could reach a wider audience... So why are you so averse towards vanilla mapping? Because your favourite engine can run limit-removing wads?

Another problem is that plenty of today's vanilla wads aren't fully vanilla-compatible. They're often fraught with VPOs or disappearing sprites, and nobody really cares since they were intended to be played in advanced engines and just labelled "vanilla" for the sake of tradition or whatever. Plutonia 2 could be a perfect example.

[myk]

Feniks said:
Plutonia 2 could be a perfect example.

There are many worse ones because efforts were made to make it vanilla compatible. But it's true that various mappers often used PrBoom/+ or ZDoom to test during development and that was a weak leg to stand on when the WAD was meant to run with vanilla. The only real issues are a few VPOs and occasional intercepts overflows (plus disappearing sprites) in some levels, but no medusas, accidental Boom triggers, missing REJECT data, or other problems that can infest WADs never tested with vanilla that authors assume may be vanilla compatible.

Still, the more recent solid use of vanilla (with Chocolate and chocorenderlimits*) to make bugless vanilla megawads started after the release of Plutonia 2 and I'd argue that, flawed or beta-like release notwithstanding, Plutonia 2 helped pave the way for a better use of vanilla by spreading enthusiasm about big vanilla projects in the present era.

* These, with DOSBox, helped reduce the number of buggy "vanilla" WADs, which were more likely back in the early 2000s.

[Jan]

Gez said:

Take a couple hours or days making a simple map just for fun. Nothing really great or really deserving to be uploaded somewhere. Just draw some lines, shape some sectors, experiment a bit with the map editor to see how you can do some stuff that you've liked in other maps.

Then load it in vanilla. Crash. Weee! Fun. Load it in your favorite source port (outside of ChocoDoom): works.

That's simply not true.

[Phml]

Perhaps not for you, but for me it is.

Perhaps I suck at mapping, but that doesn't make what Gez said any less true for people like me.

[Fernito]

Memfis said:

What about tutti-fruttis, medusas, numeric overflow crashes? You can't possibly say that they're good things as well? Can't put certain textures in the middle - that's just stupid, right?

A sort of off-topic a question about this: in what ports these bugs have been fixed?

[Enjay]

I'll swim against the current.

I don't really get the whole vanilla compat obsession. I can understand it as a continuing thing of minor interest but not in the numbers of dedicated fans it still has. I also don't understand why, sometimes, it is very aggressively defended as if it was the only way to map/play and that all others are just plain wrong and an affront to decency.

I don't believe that working within vanilla limits leads to more creative maps, despite having heard that argument many, many times. It might force you to come up with more creative ways to bend to rules but if you don't have to do that, you can use extra features to explore your creativity instead. For me, the "creativity" that comes from the limits leads more to a "hmm, I wonder how that was done in the vanilla engine" rather than "hey, look at that cool thing". Often, the "creative" thing being done is perfectly possible with proper dedicated features in another engine and the only "wow" factor it has is that something seemingly impossible in vanilla has somehow been done (or faked). Personally, I'd rather just use a proper feature instead of introducing yet another hack (which port authors may then have to maintain extra code to emulate).

As a general rule, when I play vanilla maps these days, they seem a bit bare, like something is missing. You know how some non-vegetarians after eating a vegetarian meal say something like "it was nice but it could have done with some meat". That's the sort of feeling that I get with a lot of vanilla maps. There are, of course, exceptions to that but it holds true for most of the vanilla maps that I have played in recent years.

I find it mildly disappointing when I see new projects announced with the "vanilla compat" or sometimes "Boom compat" tag because, chances are, I'll get that non-vegetarian feeling pretty quickly when I play the mod. Like I said, there are exceptions - but not many.

So, yeah, much like the original post, I don't really get the vanilla obsession.

[schwerpunk]

I like Chocolate Doom, but ZDoom is probably the sourceport that got me back into Doom after my long hiatus (I am a high framerate whore, and ZDoom runs the best out of all the ports I've tried).
Re mapping: I started in Vanilla without even knowing there was an alternative, and I would recommend that to anyone starting out. 1) Because it allows you to focus on map fundamentals, and 2) because UDMF will blow your fucking mind when you find out about it.

I think most people insist on Vanilla status for megawads so that some mappers don't go overboard. But most of the time I don't think it's necessary if the style of the project is well defined from the beginning, and quality/theme control is enforced.

[valkiriforce]

Enjay said:

So, yeah, much like the original post, I don't really get the vanilla obsession.

I don't get the ignorance. Younger kids today might say, "How can you listen to that old rock music?" While older gentlemen might say, "Why do you listen to that awful rap music?" It's simple; people have different tastes. The way you feel about vanilla is the way I feel about ZDoom; most of the time I'm just not impressed or interested. I do understand, however, why people would hold an interest in ZDoom; but for me most of the time it just doesn't feel like Doom anymore. Throw some sprites in a Quake-like environment and you've got a ZDoom map; that's my view of things (it may not be entirely true, but it certainly feels that way to me).

Now granted, there are some things like PSX Doom that I do enjoy that are for ZDoom. Most of the time I'm just not into it, that's all. To each his/her own interest.

[40oz]

In my mind, limit removing and vanilla are pretty much synonymous. I mean I know the literal definitions and differences of both, but they both, from a gameplay standpoint, do pretty much the same thing.

I don't think I've ever made a strictly vanilla compatible map, but I like to think that just making a normal map and going light with the detail is pretty much the same thing.

Evolution said:

Why so many single-player oriented projects? Where's the love for co-op oriented stuff. 2013 already, jings! ;__;

I'm taking this into account with my own mapping. The tricky part about it is that I'm not finished yet!

But yes, just because a wad has the coop starts, and has coop monsters and enough ammo to kill them doesn't make it a good coop wad.

In fact I've found pretty much all megawads (including the supposedly coop oriented ones like Alien Vendetta and Hell Revealed 2 and Scythe 2) to be really annoying for coop.

In coop, we all just want to kill stuff. It doesn't matter who solves the puzzles and gets the keys and gets to the exit. We just want to be able to kill stuff. The merit of solving a puzzle or finally finding a key is not very special in coop, especially if someone reached it first. And I've come to accept that it's very rare that all the players are in the same place at the same time in coop.

So a lot of my maps feature many different directions to go, alternate routes to the exit, a lot of secret shortcut tunnels and shortcut teleports to different sections of the map, and teleport ambushes all over the map whenever a player does something vital (not just in the area that the action took place), like activates an important switch or obtains a key. This is to make sure that the players are constantly being entertained, not just the guy who's trying to reach the exit first.

This is probably best reserved for another thread though.

[Archy]

Enjay said:

I don't really get the whole vanilla compat obsession. I can understand it as a continuing thing of minor interest but not in the numbers of dedicated fans it still has.

After years of playing strictly Vanilla Doom for COMPET-N competition, playing anything outside of complevel 2-4 just doesn't feel right, and hence my interest in WADs is greatly geared towards WADs that fit those complevels.

Based off of my reason for liking Vanilla maps, it is a possibility that the reason for the current "Vanilla craze" right now isn't because of the mappers but the players and what they are currently demanding. There's not many co-op WADs (unless just having coop starts constitutes a co-oop WAD) for probably the same reason, or should I say lack of it.

Enjay said:

I don't believe that working within vanilla limits leads to more creative maps, despite having heard that argument many, many times.

I'm not going to dispute this but I will say: the more advanced the the port, the more shit WADs it has. Just my opinion, but I don't think I've seen more crap than what Zdoom gets -- though that's not to say the abundance of crap leads to a shortage of gems.

valkiriforce said:

I don't get the ignorance. Younger kids today might say, "How can you listen to that old rock music?" While older gentlemen might say, "Why do you listen to that awful rap music?" It's simple; people have different tastes. The way you feel about vanilla is the way I feel about ZDoom; most of the time I'm just not impressed or interested. I do understand, however, why people would hold an interest in ZDoom; but for me most of the time it just doesn't feel like Doom anymore...

Now granted, there are some things like PSX Doom that I do enjoy that are for ZDoom. Most of the time I'm just not into it, that's all. To each his/her own interest.

This, very much this. It's important to know that my opinions aren't meant to be derogatory, it's just me simply listing my opinion and I have nothing wrong with others enjoying Doom the way they enjoy it, I just won't take part in their way of enjoying it. (Yes, poorly written sentence.)

40oz said:

So a lot of my maps feature many different directions to go, alternate routes to the exit, a lot of secret shortcut tunnels and shortcut teleports to different sections of the map, and teleport ambushes all over the map whenever a player does something vital (not just in the area that the action took place), like activates an important switch or obtains a key. This is to make sure that the players are constantly being entertained, not just the guy who's trying to reach the exit first.

Sounds like making a good co-op WAD would be quite a challenge, way more effort than what would be required for a good single player map.

[Magnusblitz]

As a player, I like Vanilla gameplay, but not Vanilla limits. I don't want maps to have to be boring to come under the 128 visplane limit or the 30 ceiling effect limit or what not. On the other hand, once people start adding stuff like ramps or colored lighting effects or other weird stuff, it doesn't feel like Doom anymore to me, or it feels really gimmicky.

I use ZDoom as my port to play maps just because it "feels" the best to me, but I try to stay away from anything requiring it's special features.

[esselfortium]

Magnusblitz said:

As a player, I like Vanilla gameplay, but not Vanilla limits. I don't want maps to have to be boring to come under the 128 visplane limit or the 30 ceiling effect limit or what not.

Personally I strive to make my maps as boring as possible, especially the vanilla ones.

[NiGHTMARE]

Archy said:

I'm not going to dispute this but I will say: the more advanced the the port, the more shit WADs it has. Just my opinion, but I don't think I've seen more crap than what Zdoom gets -- though that's not to say the abundance of crap leads to a shortage of gems.

Doom(2).exe has a far higher percentage of crap .wads than any port you care to name. (Admittedly this is because ports didn't exist back in the mid 90's when most of the crap was being churned out.)

[Tango]

NiGHTMARE said:

Doom(2).exe has a far higher percentage of crap .wads than any port you care to name. (Admittedly this is because ports didn't exist back in the mid 90's when most of the crap was being churned out.)

yeah that's a pretty fair point actually, and i had not considered that.

i would *love* to work more with zdoom's advanced features but i still often feel my skills aren't sufficient enough to warrant me trying to use these advanced features. vanilla has its limits that i feel pretty comfortable working in (not just with its mapping capabilities but with its gameplay), and is something the community has been perfecting (and therefore setting examples in) for years. something like zdoom on the other hand is still largely unexplored, so for me it's pretty easy to get discouraged

someone start a thread about making wads more coop-oriented, as i'm much more a fan of that discussion :p

[Archy]

NiGHTMARE said:

Doom(2).exe has a far higher percentage of crap .wads than any port you care to name. (Admittedly this is because ports didn't exist back in the mid 90's when most of the crap was being churned out.)

Maybe overall but if you count from 2005 and up, I think Zdoom takes the cake in the abundance of crap contest.

[Enjay]

Archy said:

After years of playing strictly Vanilla Doom for COMPET-N competition, playing anything outside of complevel 2-4 just doesn't feel right, and hence my interest in WADs is greatly geared towards WADs that fit those complevels.

I was trying to work out for myself why I find vanilla maps relatively dull these days and I think it's for your reasons, but the other way around: I've been playing Doom for so long that there is very little new or interesting to me in vanilla projects. I've been playing vanilla projects for 2 decades. Time for something fresh. Again I'll caveat that by saying that there are exceptions.



As for the opinion that a number of people have: that advanced ports = more crap I don't think that can unequivocally be blamed on the port's editing features. Learners, noobs if you like, are more likely to produce the poorest maps. What ports are the new mappers using? Probably ZDoom (etc). Why? Because it's easier to run for most of them and it's probably what they found first with Google. Even if that isn't the case, there has to be more to it than just advanced features means worse maps. It's certainly possible to produce something terrible within vanilla limits. I know. I've done it. ;)

And even if advanced features do mean more garbage, I don't really care. If a map is shit, I don't play it/I stop playing it. In any hobby, there is going to be a range of quality and there always has been in Doom. Play the gems, reject the shit. Even if there is loads of shit, so what? No one is forced to play it and I hope that at least the authors had fun making their maps. IMO, that's as valuable as anything. I'm certainly not going to get bent out of shape because someone made a map that isn't particularly good. There's plenty of good stuff that I like playing and the new mappers tend to either get better or move on.

[Archy]

It also has to do with what we want to do with WADs. Just "playing though" a WAD is going to be boring as hell to me, speedruning it on the other hand will supply me with hours of entertainment. Many WADs that use new features aren't tailored towards speed-running.

Enjay said:

As for the opinion that a number of people have: that advanced ports = more crap I don't think that can unequivocally be blamed on the port's editing features. Learners, noobs if you like, are more likely to produce the poorest maps. What ports are the new mappers using? Probably ZDoom (etc). Why? Because it's easier to run for most of them and it's probably what they found first with Google...

Completely agree.

["JL" was too short]

The question of whether a project is for vanilla, limit removing, or full-blown (G)Zdoom is orthogonal to my enjoyment for the most part. I've seen some people do some really amazing things with the advanced engines--like TNT, Demon Eclipse, etc.--but I've also seen fine vanilla or limit removing maps.

The one thing I don't like about Zdoom projects is that sometimes it seems like everyone who wants to mod for it ends up making gameplay/weapon mods instead of nice maps for me to play! Not so much what we see here, but over on the ZDoom forums it sometimes seems like nine out of every ten mods are 'hey here's my way cool weapon mod or gameplay mutator' with no pretty new maps. Frown.

(this is mostly me being selfish)

[Archy]

jerrysheppy said:

The one thing I don't like about Zdoom projects is that sometimes it seems like everyone who wants to mod for it ends up making gameplay/weapon mods instead of nice maps for me to play! Not so much what we see here, but over on the ZDoom forums it sometimes seems like nine out of every ten mods are 'hey here's my way cool weapon mod or gameplay mutator' with no pretty new maps.

This was always one of the things that turned me off from the Zdoom modding community.

[Acid]

esselfortium said:

Personally I strive to make my maps as boring as possible, especially the vanilla ones.

Words of a role model.

[CorSair]

I really don't care people's opinion about why should/should not do vanilla stuff. If someone prefers ZDoom stuff, I'm fine with, if someone prefers DOSBox compatible maps, I'm fine with it.
Just don't start shoving your preferences to my throat, okay?

If someone can cope with vanilla limitations, or better, live with it and do by that way, all the better for him/her. Not gonna poke fun of it, it's his/her problem, not mine how to create map...

And personally, I find vanilla limits, well, limiting. Just because you have too much drawsegs and VPO goes skyrocket, only because you want bit of detail and touch for the area... It makes me see red for about millisecond before fixing.
That is why I prefer some advanced source port. ZDoom stuff is still way beyond my capabilities for now, so Boom is more than sufficient for the job. And you can still do amazing stuff with Boom, no less.