Why don't people just use UDMF format?

[Juza]

I'll just set this straight for me: I use boom, and the only reason for that is for compatibility with other ports, but it serms the majority's just using GZDoom now, so, why limit myself (rather, ourselves) to Boom? I map because I like it but my number one priority is the player's enjoyment. That's why I'm considering leaving Boom and using UDMF.

[Nine Inch Heels]

33 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

the Mechanix wads (aeon dm and dbab remastered) are UDMF format and, in terms of visuals, they absolutely demolish even the best of the best stuff done in older formats. The beautiful Sunlust and Ancient Aliens look old-hat by comparison.

Sorry, visuals aren't everything that makes a map a good map. If these wads played like a turd on figure skates you wouldn't care about their looks for more than a few minutes I'm sure.

[Arctangent]

17 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Yes, because the math behind the length of the line vector is so simple that I'd rather skip an input box or two, because I always get what I want anyway.

 

20 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

Yeah, I think that's pretty much shoots this into the "used to it" field

something you don't seem to want to owe up to at all despite your ego stemming from being able to do square roots in your head

[Scotty]

Boom still feels like original Doom (which is what i'm in the game for in the first place) and zDoom formats just don't. If i want some true 3d kinda stuff or however the fuck you wanna put it i'll play Half Life or Quake personally.

[Arctangent]

1 minute ago, Scotty said:

Boom still feels like original Doom (which is what i'm in the game for in the first place) and zDoom formats just don't. If i want some true 3d kinda stuff or however the fuck you wanna put it i'll play Half Life or Quake personally.

Y'know, this logic always bothered me.

 

So many people have this logic, yet hang around a Doom community. Why? Why hang around a community when the only reason why you even like the game is because it's incredibly pixelated and runs as 35FPS? Because that's what "feels like original Doom" boils down to, and saying that Half-Life or Quake is superior in every way except that is really telling.

 

There's nothing engaging about Doom's gunplay? Nothing about its projectile-focused PvE? Nothing about its PvP with its high player speeds, as much as a bunch of maps devolve into shotgun fencing? Nothing about the designs of its demons? Nothing about the atmosphere? Nothing about the incredible amount of user-made content, or the relative ease of creating your own? Nothing about the memorable soundtrack or the sound effects that, to this day, make people think back to it when they hear them in other contexts? Nothing about how playing through it can be a short romp or long haul, depending on if you're playing the original or the sequel?

 

Because absolutely none of this disappears when you go up to higher ports, only the mostly unique framerate and the resolution does. But I guess that's all that truly matters, then?

[Dynamo]

No but the best part is how apparently "3D" is not true doom (whatever that even means), despite the fact that boom and even vanillla projects such as Requiem have a long history of creating fake 3d bridges and the illusion of room over room. So, fake 3d is true doom, but the moment said bridge is replaced by a 3d floor or portal, then the reaction is "no, go back to quake/half life"?

 

I mean, I get that preferences are a thing, but can we at least respect the most basic common sense here.

[Nine Inch Heels]

22 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

 

something you don't seem to want to owe up to at all despite your ego stemming from being able to do square roots in your head

You don't need to do square roots to figure out how fast a linedef scrolls things, just saying...

[Scotty]

11 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

...

Because i've been playing the game regularly for nearly 20 years and that inherent feel that i am so very used to is simply not present, at least from my moderate experience, in zdoom type gameplay. People have already cited several reasons as to how the base gameplay changes once you start messing with z-axis stuff and how things change in certain ports (not that this is a debate about a specific port), including an importnat point about how enemies react in combat. I don't recall saying that the only reason that i prefer vanilla driven OG Doom gameplay is down to poor resolution and frames either, you literally just made that one up, for whatever reason. I don't hate UDMF or anything, i just prefer older style gameplay offered in such circumstances for the reasons i have given, because i feel it is what makes Doom feel like Doom to me, regardless of supposed old style mechanics and all. It's a pure personal preference. Points you mention about sound and weapon design, etc, apply in both circumstances and that makes them irrelevant here. So, there's no objectively driven debate to be had in my view - and all i did was to give my own opinion on the topic at hand.

[Arctangent]

16 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

You don't need to do square roots to figure out how fast a linedef scrolls things, just saying...

If you do math, yes you do.

 

Let's say you want to scroll the the texture of a wall by 8 units to the left and 1.5 units up. To do this, like you said, we're going to need the length of a line vector of ( -8, 1.5 ). Now, with a calculator, that's nice and simple - after all, the formula for the length of a vector is just x² + y² = l², a simplification of the distance formula of ( x2 - x1 )² + ( y2 - y1 )² = d² thanks to the fact that x1 and y1 are 0 when talking about vectors. So you go 8 x 8 = 64 and 1.5 x 1.5 = 2.25, add them together for 68.25, and now you've got!

 

... d², which isn't going to cut it for our purposes. What we need is d, not d², but standard, unsquared d. But undoing a square just requires finding the square root, and the square root of 68.25 is ...

 

Yeah that thing has a decimal. There's no way you're going to figure out that it's 8.2613558209291530309087131563081 aaaaaaand I'm not even confident that my calculator didn't run out of digits there. I mean, with Doom's fixed point precision, it doesn't need to be even close to that number of digits, but still it's going to be a while before you even come to the ballpark of 8.26 just due to how many places you have to test.

 

2 minutes ago, Scotty said:

you literally just made that one up, for whatever reason.

No, that was pretty blatantly the implications of your post, given that you said you'd prefer to play Quake or Half-Life once those things are gone as if they were the only redeeming qualities of Doom for you.

[40oz]

I can always find ways to impress myself with the standard doom format. It doesn't seem to lack any of the features I need to be innovative.

 

[Juza]

1 minute ago, 40oz said:

I can always find ways to impress myself with the standard doom format. It doesn't seem to lack any of the features I need to be innovative.

 

Damn, what wad is that?

[Scotty]

2 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

No, that was pretty blatantly the implications of your post, given that you said you'd prefer to play Quake or Half-Life once those things are gone as if they were the only redeeming qualities of Doom for you.

Given that you can play Boom with 60fps and in 1080p, no, it clearly was not the implication cause that would be simply impossible. Amazing. I'm done here.

[Arctangent]

Just now, Scotty said:

Given that you can play Boom with 60fps and in 1080p, no, it clearly was not the implication cause that would be simply impossible. Amazing. I'm done here.

So ... you actually don't care about how original Doom felt at all?

 

I guess that explains why you're done, considering that post really was just a confused way of saying you didn't actually like Doom at all.

[Scotty]

I hate Doom that's it!

 

*golf applause*

[baja blast rd.]

This thread: 

 

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

5 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

If you do math, yes you do.

for a scrolling floor in boom, a 32mu linedef (vector) scrolls things at the speed of 1mu per tic, everything from there is EZPZ math and does not involve square roots at all, the direction of the scroll is always the direction in which the linedef is drawn, so that's also not a problem.

 

For scrolling a texture both up and left at the same time, there's "scroll texture by offset" (does not involve linedefs in boom), which also does not need square roots, unless I would want to know how fast the texture scrolls into a diagonal direction (which is uninteresting for the most part).

[Arctangent]

2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

for a scrolling floor in boom, a 32mu linedef (vector) scrolls things at the speed of 1mu per tic, everything from there is EZPZ math and does not involve square roots at all, the direction of the scroll is always the direction in which the linedef is drawn, so that's also not a problem.

Except you lose out on all precision, because you're operating with an angle that provides a change in position that's only a complete guess, so ... yeah, you still need the math if you're doing anything angled.

 

2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

For scrolling a texture both up and left at the same time, there's "scroll texture by offset" (does not involve linedefs in boom), which also does not need square roots, unless I would want to know how fast the texture scrolls into a diagonal direction (which is uninteresting for the most part).

didn't this literally start with you talking about how udmf's method of entering numbers is a lot more complicated than what boom does

 

because if you meant just selecting "scroll texture [direction]" and using the default speed:

 

 

behold the results of selecting "scroll texture left"

 

 

 

... that's it, that's all i did, it's good to go

[40oz]

27 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

No, that was pretty blatantly the implications of your post,

I hope scotty has a lot of free time because it's going to be fun to see how far you intend to go with this kind of thinking.

[bioshockfan90]

21 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

So ... you actually don't care about how original Doom felt at all?

 

I guess that explains why you're done, considering that post really was just a confused way of saying you didn't actually like Doom at all.

yeah, that's why he's still on doomworld after 7 years of being on here, he just hates his life

[Nine Inch Heels]

20 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

Except you lose out on all precision, because you're operating with an angle that provides a change in position that's only a complete guess, so ... yeah, you still need the math if you're doing anything angled.

There's only linedef you can apply to one sector, it only has one direction, and it only has one length. There's nothing complicated about this, regardless of how hard you try to conflate with formulas.

 

22 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

behold the results of selecting "scroll texture left"

Who would've thought that some things work in a similar way, simply astounding. And?

[Arctangent]

2 minutes ago, 40oz said:

I hope scotty has a lot of free time because it's going to be fun to see how far you intend to go with this kind of thinking.

I mean, I'm not doing anything right now anyway, so I can just do another post literary breakdown on how not to speak when the people you're speaking to aren't telepaths:

 

So, we start off with:

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

Boom still feels like original Doom (which is what i'm in the game for in the first place)

Which pretty much seals the deal already. That's the big redeeming factor of Doom. That's it. It's the feel, and this'll be extrapolated further on later to let it sink in just how much this is the case. But what is the feel of Doom?

 

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

and zDoom formats just don't.

Well, that answers that, doesn't it? Something Boom can do that ZDoom can't. But what's that? Let's go down a list of notable quirks that Doom has specifically:

• Low internal resolution - Something ZDoom ports can't really do, but Boom can do fine.
• 35 FPS - Actually, I think ZDoom can do this too.
• 2D collisions between solid actors - Off by default in ZDoom, compatibility option.
• Monsters will change targets after moving around for a bit to the last thing that hit them, even other monsters - Still in ZDoom.
• Slight delay between pressing the fire button and most guns actually firing - Still in ZDoom.
• Monsters move in steps of exact lengths, no more, no less, in cardinal and ordinal directions lonly - Still in ZDoom.
• Monsters can flinch in pain upon being damaged, stopping their attacks in their tracks - Still in ZDoom.
• Monsters are sluggish in their movement and attacks, making the previous quirk very, very significant - Still in ZDoom.
• The specific sounds effects - Still in ZDoom.
• Everything that isn't map geometry being represented by flat 2D sprites, some changing based on viewing angle - Still in ZDoom.
• Player movement that is somewhat nonreactive and slippery, due to a notable amount of accelerate before reaching even max walking speed - Still in ZDoom.
• Projectile hitboxes being pretty inaccurate to their sprites - Still in ZDoom
• The ability for maps to go from zero darkness to zero light immediately, despite how light should actually behave - Still in ZDoom.
• The fact that the shotguns have low fire rates yet damage through many damage instances due to their pellets dealing damage separately resulting in them being rhythmic to use as they reliable pain stun enemies - Still in ZDoom
• Losing over half your health to a projectile type that just did 10 damage the last time it hit you due to absurd damage spreads - Still in ZDoom.

So, yeah ... quite a huge chunk of the significant portions to Doom's feel are still in ZDoom. So, by elimination, that leaves only the minor details that are just important to the 90s retro FPS aesthetic and nothing else.

 

But, of course, to really add to fact that it's really only that that he finds appealing based on this post, let's look no further to the last part:

 

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

If i want some true 3d kinda stuff or however the fuck you wanna put it i'll play Half Life or Quake personally.

As we've established, the main thing about Doom important to him is the 90s retro FPS thing, so obviously adding 3D models would ruin it for him. But the two games he compares the experience of Doom is really telling, considering he's putting them forth as alternatives that have these more traditional 3D graphics. So, how do the two compare to Doom?

• They feature a sci-fi protag shooting non-humans are are unambiguously bad.
• They have shotguns and weapons that use energy cells.
• Quake has some Satanic imagery.

... That's about it. Half-Life's enemies are far more hitscan-focused, and Quake's enemies are far more melee-focused, and subsequently, they have far different gameplay styles than Doom, based around reflex, cover, and indirect fire and mobile keep-away, respectively. Yet, despite their ultimately hugely different gameplay with only a few thematic similarities, he still finds them to be perfectly serviceable alternatives to Doom when 3D graphics are involved.

 

So, yeah.

 

Just now, bioshockfan90 said:

yeah, that's why he's still on doomworld after 7 years of being on here, he just hates his life

I remember, too, when I was this new and innocent to humanity and this seemed like something that seemed outright inhuman to do.

[bioshockfan90]

if this thread doesn't get locked in 24 hours, i'll be amazed

 

when it comes down to it arctangent i think you're over-analyzing what scotty's trying to say, as well as some others in this thread and it just comes off as obnoxious. i mean i'm in the camp that i think there's 2 distinct feels between well-made hexen or UDMF-format maps and well-made boom format maps, and it takes a different style to each, very hard to master pulling off what makes doom great while using all these advanced lovely tools to their fullest creative potential. i still see doom for what it is and like it for its gameplay and the community and etc... but I think to say that i prefer the more widely accepted standard of simpler maps made in Boom doesn't make me someone who doesn't appreciate the game, i just don't think many fun maps have been made with UDMF as a result of its complexity and isn't viable to me

 

maybe someday it will, i'd like to see what someone like skillsaw could do with true3d but at the end of the day just calm down, this thread was destined to be vitriolic in the first place and i wouldn't want it to descend any further

 

EDIT: oh and not to mention some of the gameplay changes that advanced ports make that throw some people off and isn't viable for recording demos or speedrunning, that's another big big reason

[Arctangent]

6 minutes ago, bioshockfan90 said:

a post that doesn't rely on esp to realize the poster isn't talking out of their ass

See, that's a great example.

[Edward850]

11 minutes ago, bioshockfan90 said:

EDIT: oh and not to mention some of the gameplay changes that advanced ports make that throw some people off and isn't viable for recording demos or speedrunning, that's another big big reason

Probably depends on how far your definition on 'advanced' goes, but Eternity can record/play back Vanilla demos. Mind you it is pretty much the key exception.

[Reiken]

Super off-topic, but thought I might ask since we're talking about feel:  Does PrBoom+ do something significantly different with mouse input handling than other ports?  The few times I've tried using it (on different hardware setups of diff generations, even) it bugged the shit out of me, and I soon abandoned attempts at using that port.  I'm fine with the differences between vanilla/choco, (g)zdoom, eternity, and doomsday, but there was just something odd going on there.  Maybe I'm just nuts.  Oh, and don't take this as a criticism/bash of PrB+ or passive antagonism, I'm genuinely curious.

 

edit: Could it be that PrBoom+ constantly applies those input quirks that demo recording incurs?  Loss in player angle precision, or whatever.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Reiken

[baja blast rd.]

prBoom+ takes Windows settings into account, the stuff you see when you go to Control Panel -> Mouse -- if you have Enhanced Pointer Precision on there, for example, you are playing with acceleration. Setting to 6 out of 11 there with no EPP is recommended for most games that do that.

[bioshockfan90]

58 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

See, that's a great example.

haha, i spent way too long trying to figure out the wording on your quoting of mine- maybe i'm too tired but it doesn't add up 

 

 

well i need to sleep, in the morning we'll see what new developments pop up

[Bauul]

@Nine Inch Heels I've always wondered how people time stuff correctly using Boom conveyor belts. So am I right I in reading that if you draw a control linedef at a particular length, you can get a scrolling voodoo doll to move at exactly one tic per map unit? So say you want to delay something by a minute, you'd create a control linedef 32 units long and a conveyor corridor that's 2,100 units long?

 

I don't tend to map in Boom (if I want the original Doom experience I'll target limit-removing, if I want to embrace modern features I'll go GZDoom/UDMF, I don't really get the whole halfway-house thing with Boom), but I've always thought the visual programing language of voodoo doll conveyor belts was pretty cool.

[Nine Inch Heels]

17 minutes ago, Bauul said:

I've always wondered how people time stuff correctly using Boom conveyor belts. So am I right I in reading that if you draw a control linedef at a particular length, you can get a scrolling voodoo doll to move at exactly one tic per map unit?

A 32mu linedef with "action 252" will move things at 1 mu per tic, meaning 35mu per second. That's all the math you'll ever need to get started with conveyor based timers. So for a minute, a 2100mu would be the correct distance to start working with.

 

Keep in mind that there may be a small delay due to how you release the puppet in the conveyor, so taking off a few mu in the conveyor to compensate for that might be necessary, if you want to get the most precise outcome possible, but that's easy to do. Ideally you're gonna wanna have a prefab for boom mapping to save yourself some work later down the line, should you want to use conveyor based timers more often (very handy for speedmapping). I have a prefab that has a range of 2 minutes with increments of 15 seconds, I don't think you'll ever need more than such a prefab, especially since you can simply "chain" them if you wanted more than 2 minutes.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Nine Inch Heels

[Da Werecat]

I go to sleep and what is this. Such an amount of mildly irritating text to sift through.

 

16 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

If what you want is "oldschool doom", you wouldn't "advocate" formats like UDMF, because that format is primarily (+90% of cases these days) used to make doom "something it wasn't" in the first place. That's why arguments made by certain people ("You can script, but you don't have to") miss the point entirely. There's no actual reason to employ a format that limits the choice of sourceports for supposed players, if none of said format's features are being used to begin with (because there's no benefit in limiting people's choices for no reason for the mapper or the player). 

I'm assuming this was partly aimed at me. And it looks like we're dealing with a false dilemma here.

 

15 hours ago, Decay said:

Seriously, this is one of the lamest arguments you could bring up for advocating for boom/fossil format mapping. Same with "its simpler."

You're probably getting at the fact that less features make it harder to get what you want. Which is true if your goal stays the same. But when people are saying Boom is simple they're also talking about adjusting your ambition. Hard limitations can help with that.

 

Then again, they can also lead you into hack territory, but in this case you should probably think about upgrading. Unless you like challenge, in which case hack away, just don't piss off Graf too much.

 

"Can help" isn't exactly a watertight argument of supreme objectivity, but we're not talking about building submarines here, we're talking about a hobby, and not a very technical one. Using limitations to help with creative endeavors isn't exactly unheard of. It's also a good learning tool. Even with building submarines - you gotta learn to count before you learn engineering.

 

15 hours ago, YukiRaven said:

If there's a problem with a beginner using too many features, that's a problem of self control, not a problem with the format.

Well, you can solve that problem in a number of ways. Starting simple is one.

 

14 hours ago, YukiRaven said:

You know, Paul Graham's Blub Paradox seems kinda relevant here...

I'm pretty sure I saw people here who know their way around advanced source ports and still aren't above making vanilla maps.

 

10 hours ago, Doomkid said:

the Mechanix wads (aeon dm and dbab remastered) are UDMF format and, in terms of visuals, they absolutely demolish even the best of the best stuff done in older formats.

I haven't seen them, but I'm pretty sure modern games "demolish" them in turn. It's the ciiiircle of liiiife!!!

 

6 hours ago, rdwpa said:

prBoom+ takes Windows settings into account, the stuff you see when you go to Control Panel -> Mouse -- if you have Enhanced Pointer Precision on there, for example, you are playing with acceleration. Setting to 6 out of 11 there with no EPP is recommended for most games that do that.

That's no longer the case, BTW. It used to bother me a lot, especially when I switched between ports and had to re-learn aiming, but now I don't have to.

 

Edited November 13, 2017 by Da Werecat