Xeriphas1994

Is anyone else getting this message at that link?  I've loaded dozens of other threads from searches today, no problem.  Tried four browsers on two machines. Obviously we all get anxious when denied vital info about someone's mouse drivers in 2003.

That wiki page began, indeed, because yours truly had just seen it somewhere in Maximum Doom or D!ZONE 150.  (By the ergodic hypothesis, every possible vanilla trick was used once in shovelware.) Whether it was deliberate is harder to say of course, although IIRC it was a gotcha in that you needed a certain key/switch to open the door at the top, and if you'd missed it, you were forced into a huge backtrack (since you couldn't just turn around and go down the stairs).

Anyone with Python installed can make an XML dump using dumpgenerator.py.  (No programming knowledge required, trust me. :D

To "learned helplessness" I would add "learned overabundance".  A dozen awesome megawads fall from the sky each year; why should I care if I can't find everything in the Top 100?  If I have a mapping problem, I get instant help on a forum; does it really matter if there are WAD specs and a wiki with collected instructions?  It takes quite a mental leap to even realize there's an issue. (This is an overall cultural thing, not a Doom thing.  Nobody says, "There aren't enough cable channels.  I wonder what movies/sports were like in 1982."  Well, I've said it, but I'm a bit weird.) For forums in particular, you'd have to find someone with sufficient resources who wants to preserve all their posts as a teenager.  :> One (cheaper) action item might be to learn wget and make periodic backups, on physical media, of the archive.org material, as people have long done for /idgames.

+1.  I still remember Maximum Doom maps using a mixture of the methods described in this thread; the player could choose how much effort to spend harvesting that day, and be rewarded proportionally.  It wasn't "no secrets" vs "wallhump until head hits keyboard". Of course, back then it could happen by accident because the mapping utility was so slow and clunky that the author lost patience and didn't flag everything the same way.  But still.  :D

Couldn't agree more.  If we had clearly superior content 98% of the time, the problem would vanish.  How soon that happens depends on how many clueful community members contribute regularly.

In which port would it be easiest to program a two-camera mode with red and blue versions of this, slightly displaced horizontally?

The wiki has nothing like that, for the same reason that idgames rejects WADs containing every commercial texture. I seem to recall Doom Power putting up a side-by-side comparison of original and hi-res textures (but I can't read Russian, so I'm not finding it atm). Cue Quasar saying that id's founders will bequeath their documentation to doomwiki.org, so 60 years from now it can have an article about each named graphics resource.  ;>

These demos of Doom E1M3 go to the secret exit:N1M3-214.LMP N1M3-217.LMP N1M3-308.LMP (in nmdm1bhb.zip)

You haven't linked or even named the demos, so this is just a guess. As that wiki excerpt says, first obtain the exact version of the port in which the demo was recorded.  Then launch it with the exact IWAD version, and mod(s) if any, with which it was recorded. If it still fails, and if the port is an actively maintained port (or an emulated one like MBF), then we can try something else.

What if they don't choose?  When someone adds identical content to both, are they actively harming doomwiki.org (probably unknowingly), because of the search rank penalty for duplication?

As stated in the wiki article, you can also straferun in vanilla, or glitch the "action" traversal through the wall to press the switch.  I believe each method was used at least once in COMPET-N.

Apparently, the sergeant in the tunnel secret can also be sneaky and enter the courtyard.

What??   Eeeee *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump* *jump*

I'm planning some wiki contributions that will require in-game testing, and I've actually been playing other stuff for a while, so I'm cross-training.  A few awful maps from Maximum Doom, followed by a few good maps from the 1995 Cacowards (maybe not H2HMUD though).

You mean if id had decided on 5-20 minute load times between levels?  :>   No editors, because no sales.

Actually, some early-1994 tool may have produced output like that, since visual modes were rare.  But for entering an entire map's lumps by hand it would be unbearable. I assume what the OP wants to do is:have the "architectural" algorithm spit out text in the format described pack the text into WAD format run a nodebuilder on the WAD to produce a playable map The second step should be straightforward (for a programmer, heh) since the byte orders of all those lumps are known.  Then, to have a self-contained app, choose an open-source node builder so you can stitch it into the rest of the code.

Hey, I saw your test article.  WOW WHAT A GREAT IDEA.  It could save wiki-writers tons of time. I'm not a programmer, so I'll ask — is it OK if I submit a patch to make it follow the wiki's style conventions?

Regarding the wiki histogram, the "source" is obfuscated, but I believe it uses 15 iterations (Mathematica has a very similar loop construct).  So it's only the text that says 16; interestingly, the Hit point article says 15 instead. Those stats sections have needed sprucing up for years, so it wouldn't exactly be shocking if someone did find an error like that.

Different readers want different things from the walkthrough.  Maybe they're just starting and need the blue key, or maybe they know the level well but can't find one secret.  Therefore, I vote for being thorough. Also, remember that a wiki page is supposed to be a complete reference for the topic.  *All* interesting information about a map should be included somewhere, even if not in the walkthrough section. I do agree about the monsters.  General combat advice is already given in the monster and weapon articles.  Then, when describing a map, only unusual situations need pointing out.

You can!!  Holy crap, I never noticed that tiny gray "advanced search" arrow until now.  I thought they'd finally disabled searches completely as an unwanted diversion from surveillancestarting a new g+ discussion. Thank you!

+32, and I must have had a lot more free time then, as I managed to get 3 x 100% too (except when you can't do that because of map bugs) without using the mouse.  I had to reload once because Doom95 crashed on MAP25.  Don't look for it on longplays.org anytime soon though; it took nearly 8 hours.  :D I remember bringing a stopwatch to measure my heart rate at the finish, which was 210/minute.

Yes.  I could see it right away, but now I switch browsers and view the front page anonymously and it's still the previous list.  Weird.  Maybe some MediaWiki caching setting kicked in which Manc knows about and I don't.

I think this means the menu in the left-hand sidebar.  Any text that appears on *every* page is considered part of the database software, and only admins can edit it, so I'm not surprised that it seemed obscure.  For things that clearly relate to the content (like a list of ports), however, it's usually no big deal to find an admin willing to help you. In this case there have been similar edits recently to articles, "deprecating" Vavoom, so the change makes sense and I just did it.

Agreed, and I apologize if I came across as objecting to the community input.  Yes, it is usually a VERY slow and tedious process to form agreement on the wiki.  However, as we know from certain other Doom/Quake sites, when admins start making new rules arbitrarily they usually end up with no more user activity to regulate.