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Koros

Boom questions.

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So I see aot of people asking for boom compatibility and whatnot when it comes to maps. I want to know whats the hype about boom? I get you are not allowed to jump in boom which would feel like how doom did when you played back in like 95. But jumping is a thing. Like something you can do both in real life and in tons of other games and in other sourceports. So other then im guessing nostalgia in terms of play. What else does boom offer players?

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Generalized linedef actions. That's useful.
Fixes stuff like Tutti-frutti and Medusa. Even more useful.
IIRC, allows for higher-res textures and OGG format music. Nice to have.
I don't really map for Boom, so I'm not the wisest on that subject.

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ofc design around whatever features you wish for your map. I really only see the "you could've made this boom-compat and got a wider audience" comment pop up when the author maps for (g)zdoom or equivalent but doesn't use the advantages in an interesting way (i.e. there's like 2 slopes or a single r667 mob in an authorwise vanilla looking map).

As for why it's a good choice around here:
- There are a bajillion players each with their own favorite exe, targeting boom-compat gives you a balance of useful features (with generalized actions + voodoo closets + dummy sectors, you can really do any terrain transformation you can imagine) and the wad being readily playable in 95% of advanced ports.
- demo compat. FDAs and other such demos have become a defacto accompaniment to wad feedback due to their convenience (e.g. not having to upload a playthrough to yt because you're using zdoom 2.8.12345 and the demo breaks on all other versions).
- it's faster. bigass map, bigass # of mobs, old comp? prb+ holds up much better when zd et al. might slow to a crawl.

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Demo compatibility for speedrunning. PrBoom-plus, a Boom compatible port, is very good for this (maintains demo compatibility with vanilla and multiple classic ports), while ZDoom-based ports aren't really (they don't maintain demo compatibility even between different versions of the same port).

EDIT: Ribbiks beat me to it.

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Boom is the closest you can come to a cross-port standard that isn't vanilla. If you make a map for the Boom standard, it will work in nearly every port that isn't chocolate or chocolate-derived (crispy/retro).

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AlexMax said:

Boom is the closest you can come to a cross-port standard that isn't vanilla

Exactly. Don't think of Boom compatible in terms of things it offers the player; think of it in terms of what it offers level authors. Boom added a ton of editing features to use when making levels, and those features are supported across multiple different source ports.



Releasing a WAD that is Boom compatible tells the players that they can use whichever source port they prefer - ZDoom, Eternity Engine, PrBoom+, Risen3D, etc. - so long as the port is Boom compatible. The downside is that you don't necessarily get to use fancier features like scripting that you might get if you targeted a specific port.

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fraggle said:

The downside is that you don't necessarily get to use fancier features like scripting that you might get if you targeted a specific port.


Even then, there are lots of ways to simulate a basic form of scripting with voodoo doll conveyors and logic-gate style systems to control them. You can make single switches do tons of things with only just a few extra steps involved.

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fraggle said:

BOOMEDIT.WAD


That level is pretty cool! Is it really what it appears to be (a kind of map testing all or most of Boom's feature)? If so it would be an immense help to developers of would-be Boom-compatible ports. Is it available for download anywhere?

Edit: NM, here is it is:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/TeamTNT/boom/boomedit

FWIW, when I had asked looooong ago if such a thing was available (a sort of "editing canary" for testing all Boom features conveniently) I got "huh" and "not really" as an answer.

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AlexMax said:

It will work in nearly every port that isn't chocolate or chocolate-derived (crispy/retro).


FYI Doom Retro is Boom-compatible, too :]

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The impression I get from the OP is a bit misleading. They're not really asking "Why Boom" but "Why not Zdoom"? Their perspective appears to be what is the point of anyone not using something which is effectively a superset of Boom.

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Maes said:

That level is pretty cool! Is it really what it appears to be (a kind of map testing all or most of Boom's feature)? If so it would be an immense help to developers of would-be Boom-compatible ports. Is it available for download anywhere?

Edit: NM, here is it is:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/TeamTNT/boom/boomedit

FWIW, when I had asked looooong ago if such a thing was available (a sort of "editing canary" for testing all Boom features conveniently) I got "huh" and "not really" as an answer.

While it's a good litmus test, it is far from exhaustive. A very incorrect implementation of some features could still manage to run BOOMEDIT properly.

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AlexMax said:

Boom is the closest you can come to a cross-port standard that isn't vanilla. If you make a map for the Boom standard, it will work in nearly every port that isn't chocolate or chocolate-derived (crispy/retro).

The last time I tried, Doomsday didn't support the Boom format, which is a shame because it makes Doom look so good.

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Maes said:

That level is pretty cool! Is it really what it appears to be (a kind of map testing all or most of Boom's feature)?

Yes, exactly. It used to be on the TeamTNT site.

In terms of tools for developers I'll also make another shameless plug for my interactive boomref site that I put together some months back.

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fraggle said:

Yes, exactly. It used to be on the TeamTNT site.

In terms of tools for developers I'll also make another shameless plug for my interactive boomref site that I put together some months back.

Did you add a link to that in the new Tutorials subforum? (hint hint:) It's the perfect place for people to find it. BoomEdit.wad should maybe be findable there too.

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