zokum

Let me quote the Doomwiki so that we clear up any misunderstandings: "Replacing sprites using a PWAD file presents certain problems in the original Doom engine, as all sprites must be in a single continuum between S_START and S_END; and any lump that does not respect the sprite naming convention found between these markers will make Doom abort on startup with an error message. This means that the PWAD must contain all IWAD sprites, even if they are not modified, or they will be invisible. Starting with Boom, source ports started allowing several sprite ranges each between their own S_START (or SS_START) and S_END (or SS_END) markers." https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sprite By sprites it should be understood that we are talking about sprites that scale and change light levels etc, not resources like the menu graphics, status bar, title picture etc. Weapons unfortunately fall into the restrictive category. A wad that replaces a few weapon sprites, but not the all the others, is not vanilla compatible. You can do it in ports, but not in vanilla. If modding sprites was easy, you would have seen it in a lot more wad files. I'll see if I can't fix the text in the article to be more correct.

The lowest common denominator you can map for is Doom 2 v1.9. If those limits are too strict, the next step up is the Unity port and its raised limits. The unity port gives you a lot more room for complicated architecture. Above this is the MBF21 mentioned. Personally I think aiming for the Unity port is a nice compromise if you want to reach a wide audience. Anything that runs in this port should run fine in most ports. The exceptions being the original dos/unix/mac/win32 executables and chocolate doom and similar modern vanilla-style ports (Fastdoom). I'm biased towards Zokumbsp, but it is probably the best node builder tool around unless you want things like GL Nodes built. Many node builders support various special effects, so if you plan to do that, you need to pick one that supports what you want to do. Mapping for vanilla isn't as hard as people claim it is. All you need to remember is to use only the original linedef types, new textures, flats, hud and fullscreen graphics and to not make too complex scenes. It helps a lot if you know what makes scenes complicated, but as a rule of thumb, as few angles above 180 degrees as possible in order to decrease the visplane count. A two-sided 'wall' of two linedefs with one 45 degree angle would be 45 degrees on one side, but 315 on the other side.

You can't do this out of the box with just a wad file. You need to produce a complete IWAD in some form. In the old days you'd ship a batch and a way to copy the idgame iwad file and add your changes to this copy. You can't distribute (legally) id's sprites and other assets. You could probably fill it with Freedoom content and distribute a complete iwad. That also has its obvious drawbacks, you are supplying 100% new sprite content, not just a few sprite mods.

I don't know which editor people use for this, but a lot of works don't use any of the half blocks. The character set in use has both a horizontally and vertically split block, allowing for much finer resolution. As long as you remember you can't use two foreground colors, you'll do fine. The imagery here doesn't do that apart from the white and bright cyan on the hooves. And that could just stay as it is in my opinion. The biggest problem when doing line drawing style and not using half blocks is that horizontal lines are twice as thick as vertical lines. This is fairly evident on the hooves, face and eye. I'll see if I can't hack together a quick remix of your work when I come home. It's usually better to show work than explain someone how to do it...

This secret was added in version 1.2 of the game. From the top of my head there is a similar wall hiding the secret exit in e2m5, and that one was present in 1.0 if I'm not mistaken. I don't remember all the fake walls in the original trilogy, there might be more of them. The oldest map would be the first occurrence. Most likely people hex-edited grates into fake walls with the 1.0 data to figure out how the game worked.

It's a reference to the cheat code and a game someone suggested id should make. That game might very well exist in the Doom universe... https://doomwiki.org/wiki/SPISPOPD I doubt it would have been in the novel had not id immortalized the phrase with that cheat code.

Probably not. Mapping for vanilla is generally harder and in some cases more frustrating, but I wouldn't call it boring though. For a lot of people the added challenge and the need for inventive solutions is an important aspect. Mapping for a limit-removing port can still give you a fairly old-school look, but be much more forgiving when it comes to occasionally going over the limits. An area might have 134 vis planes in a specific spot, but be be below in all other locations in the map. I've tried to make vanilla-mapping a bit more interesting with zokumbsp, since it will build some of the data structures better. You should be able to build more complex maps compared to most other tools. Knowing how to build complex architecture that is within limits can be quite rewarding, at least it is to me. People often make maps that do not utilize all of what you can do in vanilla to ensure compatibility with ports. That can probably feel a bit restrictive, and maybe boring to some.

Here's a tutorial I made so that we can hopefully get some better endoom screens in our wads. I made it as textmode art to showcase what is possible. This tutorial is available in ansi textmode format, or png, converted with Pablodraw. This is version 1.0. If you find any errors, omissions or improvements tell me! Hopefully I'll release an updated version, up till about version 1.9, possibly an ultimate version of the tutorial. For those of you that wanted a searchable text or an antialiased font. Tough luck. This is a png file of the tutorial, suitable for viewing in a web browser, scaled up to 200%. Original file suitable for viewing in Pablodraw and other tools: http://doom2.net/zokum/endoom/endoom-guide.ans

I've forked it off to my own 1.7 branch. Ans I plan to clean up a bit and possibly back port some 1.10 changes.

In my opinion any sequel approval should be done by the original authors of a release. A HR3 should be approved by Donner and Niv. HR 2 does change some things from HR, but nothing drastic. A HR 3 that slightly changes things from HR 2 might have too little left of the original HR vision. The original release is 100% identical to the vision, and HR 2 is perhaps 80%. A new HR 3 that is 80% of HR 2 will then maybe be 64% of what HR was about etc. By only looking at the previous entry in a series, one can easily drift away from the essence of the original. New entries in a series can expand and twist, but shouldn't stray too far from the original source. If they do, just give it another name. It's not hard to come up with cool project names. If your project uses a well-known name, it should stay true to that brand. If you are doing an unauthorized fan-inspired take on HR, call it something like Hell Unveiled or Hell Revisited. You can make it obvious what you refer to without resorting to using an establish name to increase interest in a project. Want to make a sequel to Plutonia, then call it Urania (based on the element) or Dis Pateria (based on the roman version of the greek god). A project name is the easiest part. I think you'll get a lot more respect and recognition if a map set has its own brand. That also opens up the possibility for sequels, where you get to decide what is acceptable or not.

I like the dinosaur, but it would need a very specific mod to fit in. The Other one is an awesome ENDOOM. I think your artwork would look better in a more dos-like font, but that's my personal preference. Keep em coming @t.v.!

A boolean can only ever have the value true or false, often represented as 0 or 1. An integer can by any whole number, including 0 and negative numbers, but no fractions, imaginary numbers, irrational numbers etc. Various programming languages allow you to mix and match these different types, while others are quite strict about the type of value in use. Some places have a special 'null' value to indicate no value set, which is different from 0. Think of it as the difference between never having done something or done something an unknown amount of times. Never ever assume one programming language / field of use handles numbers and data types in the same way as another unless you explicitly know this is true. Number handling can also change from version to version of a language or depending on which vendor who made the tools you use. Computers do as they're told, but not what you want or need them to do. Programming is the art of giving the computer the correct instructions. The wrong instructions can give you wrong results, but you might be lucky and it works for your particular case, but not for others.

The way Doom handles custom assets is a bit broken. Scaled sprites like you describe is one of those areas where it's impossible to add and complex to replace. In the 90s projects that replaced sprites would do that on a copy of the main wad file and you would load that one instead. You can't legally distribute the complete file, but some projects do that anyway. I would recommend against it. When it comes to changing the logic/properties of things in game, dehacked was a small tool to patch the executable and many projects would ship with a .deh file and instructions on how to change a copy of the executable. So if you want vanilla compatibility, that is what you need to do. If you aim for Chocolate Doom compatibility, it can easily load deh files since the binary deh patching isn't possible.

I know there are tools that can find out these things, odd balancing like on map02. A few years ago I looked for one, but couldn't find a good one. Maybe it's one of those things one should just make yourself. A web based one would be neat. Just upload a wad to a page and get a report back. ZokumBSP has some very hackish report stuff that I used while developing. Not sure if it even works, but it has some blockmap html generation. That project has a few dead ends of things that aren't maintained or working well. Maybe I'll conjure up something for 10.12.2023? :)

That would have been awesome, but also possibly a bit annoying. You'd need a good way to cancel them in case people make long ones. You can use the blink attribute for a two frame 'animation'. It isn't very impressive though. Animated titlepic and such would probably be a bigger boon to the community. The animated intermission screens in Doom are quite nice, and I wish we could have had more like that at our finger tips in Doom 2. Doom 2 should have had even more hard-coded stuff put into the wad file. Where is this artwork from?

It's a fairly common thing to assume that a port has the exact same implementation as another port. What annoys me is when a port is different and people insist on the other port being the correct implementation and that there is an error in the original executable or in the map. This most commonly happens if you make a vanilla map that works fine in say chocolate doom, but not in a port. Some people will put the blame on the map/mapper. In most cases, the port is the problem. There are of course grey areas, especially when it comes to undefined behavior like using uninitialized memory. doom2.exe does muck up that once in a while.

The Doom titlepic in a different uniform color is a neat idea. The in-game sprite is green, but the hud uses the color for player 2 in single player. Artistic choices I guess.

The main problem with those Master Levels is that they're not good value for money if you had internet, BBS or computer party access back in the days. Id had a great idea, having some of the better people in the community make a very nice standalone map. The map quality of the finished product is a bit variable. It's also questionable if it was any better than the best shovelware cds. Id probably could have gotten better ML by simply having it as an open competition. Specify 3 themes and let people enter into one of the three categories. From that they could have compiled a quite coherent and interesting map set. If it was a success, then do another competition, ML2, with new themes. The themes would have had to be somewhat broad, "wood and stone" "marble hell", "city maps", and so on. Make a version of Doom 2 that has Doom style episodes, have it be 10 maps per episode, with two of them being secret maps or something like that. You'd have to tell the mappers to send two versions of the map if it had a secret exit, one with it and one without it. Another thing they could have done was to add a few of their back catalogue games as a 'free' bonus. Include Spear of Destiny and some Keen games? To me Maximum Doom was a bit meh, I don't think I ever saw it in shops here in Norway. It's not as bad as Final Doom is, value for money wise, but it's still fairly meh. I'd say Final Doom is id's worst game, and I think more highly of Doom 3. FD isn't that bad, but it is not worth the money. Doom 3 was an ok game, but it had the wrong name and the better maps came late in the game. It would have done better if it had a new name, but people saw it as a spiritual successor to the Doom games. Id were basically shit at product names after Quake.

I think episode 2 in Doom 2 has the biggest coop improvements, so for COOP I think episode 2 is the best one. The first coop monster, the cyber on map11 is in an annoying place and killing it is a chore. Map12 however completely changes character. Originally the outer area is more or less completely safe and all the action and monsters are inside and on the upper level. With the addition of the Spider Mastermind, the outer area is in many ways more dangerous than the upper level. Thematically the mom + kids dynamic works very well on that map. Map13 has a similar experience. There aren't that many monsters in the outdoor area, most of the action is inside the buildings. The cyber demon makes it a lot less predictable and the walking sound increases the tension when inside a building. You know that exiting could be fatal. Map15 is much like map13, it adds a lot more tension when traversing the outside area and being near windows or ledges. You can choose to ignore the cyber or you can try to kill it, with the obvious ammo shortage that leads to. It's a shame map16 doesn't have a boss monster. Having a cyber placed outside, maybe near the shotgun in order to make it get into action when you start shooting and to ambush the player, would have been cool. Teleporting in a spider mastermind along with the rest of the horde would have been awesome. The map17 cyber is a bit like the map11 one, but in a more fair and central location. It's a good addition. Map18 could have improved greatly from a cyber entering the central area at some point, maybe after picking up one of the keys? Map19 has an excellent cyber, it really works as a lord of the fortress monster in an area that is somewhat barren monster wise. The one on 20 is a bit more meh. It might have been more fun to add 1-2 spiders in the outside blood area. The third episode is low on extra bosses. There's really no good way one could have been used on Nirvana. Map22 also doesn't have any good places. Having one in the central area would be very frustrating. Map23 has a boss, but one more would have been neat. Map24 would have a lot of tension added with an extra cyber on a platform. Having one in the nukage would be more frustrating than fun. It could have worked if monster only teleport lines had given it the ability to get around in the map a lot more. The 26 one is mostly annoying, but it does add a ton of tension. Map27 could have benefited from one and map30 as well, adding some much needed additional challenge on coop. To me the last 10 maps in the game aren't all that interesting on coop apart from map26. So all in all, I'd say that the middle portion of the game is more interesting on coop than the other two. A cyber in the outer area on map07 would have been an interesting addition. As far as I can tell, McGee didn't add coop monsters. Romero added on almost all of his and Petersen on maybe 1/3rd of his maps. Maybe this was a late idea and they didn't update maps and add the extra challenge. There's none of this stuff in the first game. For some reason, the extra bosses mechanic didn't see much use in Thy Flesh Consumed despite the upped difficulty. E4m3 should have had one, as well m5, m7, m8 and m9. Too bad.

Doom's original handling of height differences is fairly poor, both for monsters and the player. Since all objects in Doom are square boxes, lining up to shoot at a monster diagonally makes it much easier to hit it. You can hit with all the pellets of a shotgun from farther away and it is easier to snipe without tapping the chain gun. It's one of those things that probably matter more in deathmatch. It's a shame so many map editors render the monsters as circles, at least as default. You could in theory make a room with two exits. One narrow where both you and large monsters can fit, and one diagonal and wider where monsters can't fit at all, despite it being wider. That would be a bit of an asshole move, but it's one of those factors one needs to take into account when making winding tunnels with linedefs that aren't axis-aligned. Another asshole thing that can be done is to make stairs in tunnels that you can ascend but not descend. One thing I make sure to check for is that not only should it be possible to descend a set of stairs, but it should also be possible to do without banging your head into the ceiling and killing all forward momentum at every step. Such stairs slow down the player and are frustrating to use.

Barrels of Fun is a gimmick map that would have worked great as a secret map. As mandatory progression it doesn't quite fit in. That one and a few others could have been secret maps and we could have had a few more secret exits in the game. Dead Simple would work well as a secret map, 14 and 11 would also work well as secret maps as they don't fit in design wise. As secret maps they would have been really interesting. 21 (Nirvana) should have been scrapped or been an optional secret map late in the game. By cutting down on the weird/lower quality maps as mandatory maps, the game play experience would have been better. E2m9 might be one of the worst Doom maps ever, but it is a secret map, so it doesn't really matter. Map32 is another stinker as it's the same gimmick as map31. Had they converted a boss, it would have been an awesome map, but as it is, it sucks. Mech Hitler as as 'reskin' of the Spider Mastermind would have been neat. Artwork is done, hardly any new code needed. Doom 2 had so much potential, but it was a bit rushed. It needed more polish, polish that Doom got. Doom 2 has much stronger game play, but Doom is a better designed game, in my opinion.

I've said it before, but I think the game would have played much better with some of the maps moved around, and just dropping Nirvana. The maps were moved around, heavily, and McGee retextured/remonsterted his to fit the new order. Petersen most likely didn't care or had maps to finish. I've always held the position that Sandy's maps are of somewhat lower quality than the others, but a large part of that was due to him making many more maps than the rest, combined... In Doom 1 it isn't hard to be the star designer when you are responsible for 7 maps while the other one is responsible for 20, which were in many cases unfinished Hall maps. In Doom 2 its slightly more balanced, but Petersen is still credited for 18 of the 32 maps. The episodes were a feature in v1.666, but this was removed in later versions, I think id just retconned this as it made little sense to have those episodes, especially given the story line intermissions not quite matching up. It's hard to pick a favorite third as there are so many highs and lows. I think I'd have to go with 1-11 as it has an ok overall quality, with not that many highs, but also not as bad stinkers as the other two. I've always disliked 12, 21 and 25. 25 is just so damn bland and the progression is lazy. The lighting and areas just don't make sense, even within the Doom games.

Once you know what to look for, you'll start noticing a lot more. There's a really bad one on e4m3. @Altima has a video where you see it really clearly. The one on e1m1 is much more complex, but harder to notice. Both e1m5 and e1m7 have rooms that are taller on the inside.

They can miss when firing from a great distance due to too low precision on the Z axis movement of the projectile. They can still hit you from any distance, but the "safe" spots become larger and larger the further away you are. The homing ones however keep adjusting, and will therefor also update the z-axis movement as it approaches. It should be noted that Doom projectiles move at a constant speed in X,Y and as high a Z-speed as needed. This means that no matter the elevation, the projectile will have the same travel time. In practice this means that monsters above or below you fire faster projectiles. When monsters fire from above and fairly straight down, the projectiles will travel quite quickly. This effect makes it somewhat harder to dodge projectiles, and can be used to increase the difficulty. Monsters are a fair bit away, but the projectiles will travel quicker than you would normally expect. This behavior is probably changed in some of the ports as it is a bit counter-intuitive and a bit of an oversight.

Most of this isn't ascii art. It's what is know as ansi art. Ascii is black/white and only the first 127 characters in the common character sets. Use anything beyond that and we move into ansi land. Ascii art can look great, but I don't think it's used much for ENDOOM stuff due to it inherently having more capabilities and a fixed size.