ReX

Is there a "stair-building" tutor anywhere out there?
One that shows you step-by-step, how to build an ordinary set of stairs?
(There's more to stairbuilding than simply clicking on WadAuthor "Convert sector to Stairs" button. How so? Because you can get hung up a TON of ways if you're new at building a staircase).

I'm talking here about need for "step-by-step" stair-building tutor. Like Nightmare once wrote for sectors (THAT was a tutor! Step-by-step, all the way!!)
Anyway, I've searched through all the following:

*** "Unofficial Wad Designers Handbook" by Ron Allen.
Zilch. (Gives tons of info about everything in Doom EXCEPT exactly how to build things).

*** "Doom Editing" by John Bishop.
Zilch. (Lots of info and theory but NOTHING about how to build things).

*** "WadAuthor Windows Help File" by John Williston.
Zilch. (A giant 5meg "Help" file that Nightmare pulled out of Windows, compiled into huge Word Doc, downloaded for all to use. Very useful, I've gone all thru it. But NOTHING on exactly how to build stairs).

*** "How to Build Complex Sectors" by Rick Clark.
(Wonderful little tutor!! I used it often. But has NOTHING on building stairs).

Rex (hint, hint) maybe you might consider writing a step-by-step stairbuilding tutor? (You have no projects goin' right now. <grin>).
fragg

fragg said:

Is there a "stair-building" tutor anywhere out there?One that shows you step-by-step how to build one?

One stair or one staircase? Are you talking about tricking rising steps into going in a certain direction or just plain making stairs? If it's stairs, just make as many sectors as you want for however many steps you want, and then set their floor and ceiling heights to the height you want. Player can't climb over 24-pixel-high stairs. That's all stairs are. If you don't know how to make the sectors in your editor... well, that's another story ;) I can explain WadEd and that's about it. I don't dare try any sort of structure building in any editor other than WadEd. Past traumas involving such events have me scared to ever leave WadEd again...

That is how I fell about DMapEdit :-)
I only use Wad Author to build nodes and fix things up. My DMapEdit messes up when it trys to build sectors smaller than 8 pixels wide.

I suggest switching to BSP or other later nodes builders. The one in WadAuthor is the OLD version of BSP that happens to have a flipped side mistake that was only fixed a few years ago in BSP. The symptom is an "invisible barrier" in certain levels.

The newer BSP is also way faster (only an issue for large levels/slower machines).

Lüt said:

One stair or one staircase? Are you talking about tricking rising steps into going in a certain direction or just plain making stairs? If it's stairs, just make as many sectors as you want for however many steps you want, and then set their floor and ceiling heights to the height you want. Player can't climb over 24-pixel-high stairs. That's all stairs are. If you don't know how to make the sectors in your editor... well, that's another story ;) I can explain WadEd and that's about it. I don't dare try any sort of structure building in any editor other than WadEd. Past traumas involving such events have me scared to ever leave WadEd again...

Lut, yes, I mean a simple set of stairs.
I could go route you suggested (build a bunch of sectors, ascending in height) but I believe WA will do job with one sector.
At least I once built a set of stairs using WA and it seems (if memory serves right) WA did the job with one mouse click.
But after reading your post, I'm not sure anymore if that was the case (its been quite a while).
fragg

Lazer said:

That is how I fell about DMapEdit :-)
I only use Wad Author to build nodes and fix things up. My DMapEdit messes up when it trys to build sectors smaller than 8 pixels wide.

Lazer, thanx for reply. BTW, what the heck would you do with an 8-pixel sector?
Put a mosquito on it? <g>). A bird-house? heh, heh.
fragg

deepteam said:

I suggest switching to BSP or other later nodes builders. The one in WadAuthor is the OLD version of BSP that happens to have a flipped side mistake that was only fixed a few years ago in BSP. The symptom is an "invisible barrier" in certain levels.

The newer BSP is also way faster (only an issue for large levels/slower machines).

Deep, thanx for the reply. I had no problem with BSP that WA uses (so far).
Perhaps Phileo will put newer ver. in the new WA.
What I think I'll do now is go back to my map and tinker with WA stair-building command.
(Maybe I've been doing something wrong).
Rex might drop by here, see the thread and gives his input.
Thanks again to all of you for replys.
fragg

fragg said:

I could go route you suggested (build a bunch of sectors, ascending in height) but I believe WA will do job with one sector.

OK I see what you're saying. Personally, I do everything manually. I stopped trusting computer software to do things for me years ago. No matter who it's from (nothing personal John/Jack :) If I could access my start menu right now I'd start WadAuthor and check, but Windows98 sucks and sorta disabled it :| If I recall correctly, WadAuthor does have an option to build staircases of certain height, length, unit space, etc. but I'm not fully sure. On the other hand, I know Deep sure does. If it's not too hard I would just build them individually if I were you. Haven't used WadAuthor to actually design maps so I don't even know how you'd do that. It's pretty easy in Deep.

Hi Fragg:

You basically have covered the 2 ways to build stairs -- WA's automatic stairs, and the manual way. I prefer to use the manual way, because, as Jack pointed out, WA creates stairs with the linedef oriented "backwards". Not that this is wrong, but the convention I use is to always have the front of the linedef facing a certain way; WA does it the other way for stairs, which means I have to go in and manually reverse the orientation of the stair linedefs. Here is a quick step-by-step guide to creating stairs manually under two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Steps leading to a higher area

Say you want to climb from a room with a floor height of 0 to a ledge whose floor height is 64. Assume that the ceiling height above the steps does not change (refer to scenario 2). Therefore, you only need to work with floor sectors for now.

The typical height of a step is 16 (although you can go up to 24 without requiring the player to jump). 16 is convenient, as typical heights in DooM (32, 64, 128, 256) are divisible by 16 without leaving any remainder. Thus, in this example the height difference of 64 allows you to create 3 intervening sectors of 16 height each. The floor sector is 0, the first step is 16, the second step is 32, the third step is 48, and the ledge is at 64.

Decide on the breadth and width (or depth, not to be confused with the height) of the steps. In this example say we pick 64 for the breadth and 32 for the width. Create a 64*96 sector in your room, and split the 64*96 sector into 3 sectors, each 64*32. WA creates sectors with the front linedef facing inwards. In the case of steps its convenient to have them facing outwards, so flip all outer linedefs. Join one of the 64 length sidedefs to an appropriate section of your ledge. Now you'll have three inner linedefs in your steps -- make sure that they face away from the ledge.

What you have now is three congruent sectors in your room, attached to your ledge. Assign a floor height of 48 to the sector adjacent to the ledge, a floor height of 32 to the middle sector, and a floor height of 16 to the sector furthest from the ledge. Assign an appropriate lower texture to the front of all sidedefs in the step sectors. (As a matter of style, also lower unpeg and horizontally align the outer sidedefs of the steps, and make sure the flats match the sidedefs.) You're done.

Scenario 2: Stairs in a corridor or stairwell (i.e., both the floor and the ceiling are ascending)

This scenario works in much the same way as Scenario 1, but with a couple of additional steps. Say you want to go up 128 between one room and another in a corridor that already connects them, and the height of each step is 16. Say the corridor is 128 tall. Divide your corridor into 7 sectors. This time, the outer linedefs are one-sided (i.e., solid walls), so of course they need to face inwards. Turn your inner linedefs so that the fronts are facing the lower room.

Starting with the sector closest to the lowest room, increase the floor *and* ceiling height of each sector incrementally by 16. Therefore, the lowest step will have a floor of 16 and a ceiling of 144, the next will be 32/160, the next 48/176, and so on until you complete the last step before the upper room. Assign lower textures to the front sidedef of each step, and upper textures to the back sidedef of each step.

Finally, apply the style guide to make the stairs look natural -- horizontally align the outer sidedefs. Vertical alignment in WA does not appear to work, so you'll have to do it manually. Select the outer sidedefs for the lowest step -- apply a y offset of -16 (in other words, you want the top of the texture to be drawn starting 16 units below the top of the sidedef. This will align the texture vertically with the walls of the lower room.) Apply a y offset of -32 to the second step, -48 to the third, and so on until the top. The 7th step will then have a y offset of 112, after which you're in the top room and back to a y offset of 0. You're done.

Hope this helps.

Lüt said:

OK I see what you're saying. Personally, I do everything manually. I stopped trusting computer software to do things for me years ago. No matter who it's from (nothing personal John/Jack :) If I could access my start menu right now I'd start WadAuthor and check, but Windows98 sucks and sorta disabled it :| If I recall correctly, WadAuthor does have an option to build staircases of certain height, length, unit space, etc. but I'm not fully sure. On the other hand, I know Deep sure does. If it's not too hard I would just build them individually if I were you. Haven't used WadAuthor to actually design maps so I don't even know how you'd do that. It's pretty easy in Deep.

I stopped trusting computer software to do things for me years ago.
========================================

Not exactly, how did you post your message, run it over "manually"? Just pulling your leg there<g>

What OS do you run, if not Win98? And what Browser?

Lüt said:

One stair or one staircase? Are you talking about tricking rising steps into going in a certain direction or just plain making stairs? If it's stairs, just make as many sectors as you want for however many steps you want, and then set their floor and ceiling heights to the height you want. Player can't climb over 24-pixel-high stairs. That's all stairs are. If you don't know how to make the sectors in your editor... well, that's another story ;) I can explain WadEd and that's about it. I don't dare try any sort of structure building in any editor other than WadEd. Past traumas involving such events have me scared to ever leave WadEd again...

And you don't find WadEd's sector builder traumatic???? Personally i just love it when you click "build sector" and it proceeds to take in the surrounding 5 or 6 sectors... or my really, really personal favorite of turning the entire outside of the map into one giant sector... But unfortunatly like you i can't build a frikkin thing with any other editor.
Oh well, life's a bitch and then there's Doom. lol

fragg said:

Lazer, thanx for reply. BTW, what the heck would you do with an 8-pixel sector?
Put a mosquito on it? <g>). A bird-house? heh, heh.
fragg

Well, try building a "real looking" bridge and you will need to make the floor texture as close as possible (1 pixel) away from the side. Plus, 8 x 64 pixels is what a small door is usually.

Lazer: Got'cha ....now I see. Thanx for the details.
You sound like experienced mapper. That's great.
Well, someday I'll get the hang of it.
fragg

ReX said:

Rex, your like Rock of Gibralter ("always right there"!! <g>).
Thanx for your "Manual" method.
May I impose on you a bit further?

(1) Can you give "step-by-step" for building a staircase using WA "Automatic" method?
Please assume "zero know-how" on part of reader. Here's the scenario....

(1) WA-newby has a huge open courtyard(F_sky=512/Floor=0).
To get training in using WA "automatice stairs" feature -- he'll build staircase in middle of courtyard. It won't touch anything.
Staircase parameters (LxWxH, # of steps, textures) can be any value.
And he wants WA to "auto-build" the staircase from ONE sector.
Once he's got the method down, it's just a question of practise.

(2) He hasn't set up any stair "defaults" in WA "Tools/Options/Stairs" section. (And wouldn't know exactly what to enter in "defaults" anyway). Ditto for any other places in WA that he might/would be expected to enter values.

(3) He now begins......
In middle of huge courtyard (F_Sky=512, Flr=0) he has WA create rect. sector. (Naturally, in WA its "2-sided" sector). L=1024, W=128, Floor=64. Set "Impassible" flag. Set "Below" Textures=(whatever).

What is next step? Does he then use "create stairs" button? (if so, what values does he enter?).
Or PRIOR to that, should he fiddle with "Tools/Options/"Stairs" values? (if so, what does he enter?).
Any other places, in WA he's supposed to enter values or "click" on things?
(Like for example, in sector "Properties" does he change thingy that says "Normal", to "Stairs"?).
If so, what does he do when a 'pop-up' menu then appears?.
And in what order, does he do ALL the above things?

Bottom Line:
ReX, I'm hoping you'll give a "Walk-Thru For Braindeads".
(something like... "Starting with the Above sector you created in courtyard proceed with WA as follows ....'Click on this... Enter this value... then click here, enter that value... then...").
Choose any values you want. Thanks much.
fragg

Put another sector (say 64 x64) inside your main room. Highlight it as a sector, then right click your mouse and choose "convert sector to stairs". Then you choose number of steps and thier direction. Hit "ok" and *POOF* insta-stairs :)
You can then drag the vertex's anywhere you want to reshape your stairs.

Zigmund said:

And you don't find WadEd's sector builder traumatic???? Personally i just love it when you click "build sector" and it proceeds to take in the surrounding 5 or 6 sectors... or my really, really personal favorite of turning the entire outside of the map into one giant sector... But unfortunatly like you i can't build a frikkin thing with any other editor.
Oh well, life's a bitch and then there's Doom. lol

Yes even though WadEd takes 4 times as long to do something the way it's supposed to, it's still 3 times quicker than the other editors. Sucks, but what can you do...

fragg said:

For a quick response to your question refer to Zigmund's reply below. I'll simply elaborate on his outline.

1. In your courtyard create your 1024*128 sector, say in a North-South orientation. If you wish you can set the height to 64, but it's not necessary when building stairs. Moreover, if your courtyard floor is 0, having your stairs begin at 64 is a bad idea (because it's too high to reach from the courtyard floor) unless there's a nearby ledge or something off which the player can jump to reach the bottom of the stairs.

2. Assume you're using WadAuthor's default motif for stairs, you'll want to assign a flat such as FLAT5_4 (grey stone) to your sector. The reason for this is as follows -- WA's default motif uses STONE4 (cracked grey stone) as the lower texture for the stairs. If the sides of the stairs are grey stone but the tops of the steps are, say, grass your stairs will look unrealistic. Still, this is more a matter of style than technical correctness.

3. Continuing to assume you're using the default motif, simply right click your mouse inside the 1024*128 sector and select "Convert Sector to Stairs.." Put in the desired number of steps (say 8), the motif (in this case default), and orientation (say S to N). WA will create a set of stairs consisting of 8 steps with the following attributes:

* the stairs will rise from South to North
* each step will be 8 units high
* all lower textures (outer sidedefs as well as inner sidedefs) will be assigned as STONE4. However, keep in mind that the inward-facing orientation of the linedefs means that WA has had to assign the texture to the BACK of the sidedef. Also, the inner sidedefs (i.e., the riser of each step) have both lower and upper textures assigned for both the front and back sidedefs. This is really not required, as only the lower back sidedef of each step riser in this case needs a texture. Still, sticking with WA's default will not screw anything up. The lowest step riser has a lower back texture and an upper front texture (only the lower back texture is required), and the back of the top-most step has only a lower back texture. Again, sticking with the default etc. etc.
* the textures along the sides of the stairs will be lower unpegged and horizontally aligned (a cool time-saving feature of WA). However the back is not lower unpegged. If you want a seamless cracked stone texture that wraps itself around the stairs, simply lower unpeg the back sidedef (i.e., the one behind the top-most step)

Now you can begin to play with the steps -- change the shape of the stairs, increase the step height if you wish, assign a different texture to the sidedefs, etc. If you change the shape of the stairs or assign a different texture, make sure you horizontally align your sides again, and have a matching flat.

Incidentally, in your message you had mentioned setting an "Impassable" flag, and setting the below textures. Do not set an impassable flag, because it will simply cause an invisible barrier around the stairs, preventing the player from using them. There's no point in setting the below textures, because once you create the stairs with WA's default motif, your texture assignment will be over-written by the default texture (STONE4).

If you do not wish to use the default motif, you can create your own motifs. From the menu toolbar select Tools, then Motifs, then Stairs. Give your new motif a name, then change the variables to suit yourself. They are somewhat self explanatory, so I won't go into the details.

(Had enough of me yet?) Good luck.

ReX, thank you very much for all the help. I printed out everything and will refer to it as needed in future.
Particularly good was the info on text-aligning.
I didn't need to use it here, but I'm sure it will come in handy later.

(BTW, you should have seen what a mess I was getting just trying to build simple staircase....things were floating in air over my head, or sitting on ground, and bearing no resemblance to a staircase <G>).

The solution to my problem I found. The WA "motif" file was missing key data, and there's no "restore defaults" button there.
So, I had to figure out what John meant by word "Increments".
And how they refer to "steps" and "ceiling". Once I figured that out, I entered proper values, and exited Motif file.

Then I simply built a sector in the courtyard, giving it Flr=0, Ceiling=512 (which is what courtyard has) and L=512,W=128.
I totally ignored wether it had any textures or not, and ignored which way the linedefs were flipped.
In other words I built a rect. sector (having above dimensions) and let WadAuthor assign all values n' textures.
Then I r-clked on it, chose "convert sector to stairs" -- and it turned the sector into a set of stairs.
I then went into game -- and voila! -- there it was and I ran up n'down stairs. <g>)
Then I built another sector, flipped the linedefs so they pointed out -- and told WA to turn it into staircase.
It did so, and this one worked n'looked just as good as the first.

Bottom Line:
Once you know what the word "increment" means (in 'Motif' section of WA) your home free.
fragg

Zigmund said:

Put another sector (say 64 x64) inside your main room. Highlight it as a sector, then right click your mouse and choose "convert sector to stairs". Then you choose number of steps and thier direction. Hit "ok" and *POOF* insta-stairs :)
You can then drag the vertex's anywhere you want to reshape your stairs.

Zigmund, thank you for the help.
I got the thing going, and appreciate your emphasizing that WA builds staircases with a single mouse-click.
That, got me to look elsewhere for my problem, and I found it was in "Motif" section which was screwed up (wrong 'stair' and 'ceiling' values).
Thanx again.
fragg

ReX said:

Jeez how do you find the time to write all that out? I'm lucky to get a paragraph written if I'm really motivated.

Now that I think about it, I still haven't mailed that guy who wanted to know how I cut+paste map sections together in WadAuthor... that was 4 or 5 months ago if I remember correctly :P

deepteam said:

I stopped trusting computer software to do things for me years ago.
========================================

Not exactly, how did you post your message, run it over "manually"? Just pulling your leg there<g>

What OS do you run, if not Win98? And what Browser?

What are you gonna do, track me down?

I'm running WindowsXP (unfortunately) and Explorer 5.5 (unfortunately). I will be back to Windows95 and Explorer 4.0 relatively soon.

I always cut+paste my messages before I post them too. This forum system doesn't crash too much but sometimes things have happened. If I write more than a paragraph I usually save it to a temporary text file until I'm sure that it's been posted.

I'm posting from XP right now, but using Explorer 6. Both are relative improvements. Haven't had the little glitches we had with 2000. There is a problem with CD checking games though, e.g. - MS Age of Empires (I think they'll fix that&lt;g&gt;).

XP "native" settings are not cool, but you can configure it to look "classic" (thank god) - so it's more compact. The default "look" is ugly, so that was also changed back:))

The debug stuff makes it run slow (I noticed via a benchmark of mine), so can't wait to get the final version and get the speed back.

Why would you want to run '95 and 4.0 (icky)? 98 is a lot better at managing your menus and 5.5 is way faster than 4.0 and all sorts of stuff.

Lüt said:

What are you gonna do, track me down?

I'm running WindowsXP (unfortunately) and Explorer 5.5 (unfortunately). I will be back to Windows95 and Explorer 4.0 relatively soon.

I always cut+paste my messages before I post them too. This forum system doesn't crash too much but sometimes things have happened. If I write more than a paragraph I usually save it to a temporary text file until I'm sure that it's been posted.

Lut, I'm glad to see someone else doesn't trust forum not crashing (before their message is posted).
You "cut n'paste" for insurance -- but my insurance method is to "hi-lite" the message (before posting it) and then open "Edit" and click on "Copy".
Now I've got a copy of my message in memory. If forum crashes before its posted -- no sweat.
In fact, I can even leave Doomworld, go surfin', and come back later and post it.
fragg

fragg said:

but my insurance method is to "hi-lite" the message (before posting it) and then open "Edit" and click on "Copy". Now I've got a copy of my message in memory. If forum crashes before its posted -- no

That's pretty much what I meant ;) It's just that sometimes the entire computer goes down and if you gotta restart, it's no longer in memory.

I do what you said for smaller messages, but when I said the text file, I meant for really big ones, like the ones Rex has posted above.

deepteam said:

Why would you want to run '95 and 4.0 (icky)? 98 is a lot better at managing your menus and 5.5 is way faster than 4.0 and all sorts of stuff

IE 5.5 doesn't crash TOO much. At least not like 5.0. I reinstalled 5.0 maybe 10 times before going back to 4.0. First, the drop-down menus would crash, then clicking certain links, then sites with certain plugins, it just never stopped. 5.5 doesn't have much of anything like that, although I hate the text selection display (when you highlight things on pages) and I'm going to shove a keyboard down the throat of whoever decided to make auto-complete a dropdown menu.

But 4.0 has support for anything and everything you'd ever need on a website: why get a later version? Basically all that's going to happen is idiots are gonna go "OH COOL LOOK AT ALL THESE NEW FUNKY AND COLORFUL FEATURES!" and they give me eyeaches to the point of seeing their websites after I close my eyes and go to sleep. I mean, changing the scrollbar colors?? Why change one part of the window and not the rest? Stupid "feature". 4.0 handles all the plugins you could possibly need and all the HTML you could possibly need. No need to bloat it anymore. I also make all my pages 4.0 compatible (although there's no significant difference in 95% of the pages that require 5.5).

The most annoying thing in the 5's is when you try to save an HTML file and it downloads everything on the page and even changes the links around to match some stupid directory it creates for the files. Something like "This_Pages's_Files". NOT ACCEPTABLE. It also lets people drag frames around and resize them. I make my frames a specific size on my sites and I DON'T want people moving them around. I've happened across this because when I read websites, I don't use the scroll bars: I select the page from the upper left and keep selecting things until the page scrolls down. So many pages with frames I go to, the main text is in the center window and when I move up to the top of that particular frame to begin selecting it, it grabs and moves the frames around. Pain in the ass.

The drag-and-drop Start Menu on Windows98 has to be the most damn annoying "feature" of all time. Being a speed-clicker, I constantly end up dragging programs and folders onto the desktop, into other folders, clicking two groups too fast and suddenly having one folder open up in a separate window on the desktop, etc. The thing hardly works right anyways. You ever try deleting more than a few icons from the same group through the start menu? The first usually goes away fine. Sometimes the 2nd one does. But usually after the first one, it'll delete the files but still show them in the menu until you reload the menu. And you're like "WTF??" so you try to delete it again and it says "File Not Found", because it's already deleted, just forgot to remove it from the Start Menu listing. SMART! And as long as you can do all that, why the hell can't you make new folders as well? Typical half-assed Microsoft features. And that verical scrolling BS is just that.

The main reason for running Windows95 is it's low system requirements. Windows95 boots faster on a 486/66 with 16MB RAM than Windows98 does on the Celeron500/256MB RAM. So guess what I did? Put Windows95 on the Celeron and BOOM! Cut the startup time by over 3/4. Same thing with loading programs, etc. It's just so much faster! Look at it like this: Windows95 was made for the hardware that existed back in '95, and Windows98 was made for the hardware that existed in '98 (which means it hogs more resources because there's more resources it thinks it can hog), so when you run '95 on '98 hardware, you are getting a massive performance boost. I still think it's funny that my 486 boots faster than some of the 1GHz machines at work running Windows98. Of course after it loads the desktop the startup items are different so I don't count that part. But with Windows95, you tell it to do something and it does just that. Quite simple. Windows98 does too much side-processing of other things. I'm not exactly sure what I'm talking about now but everything runs and loads multiple times faster in 95 than 98, so 95 it is. I prefer performance, that's all. 98 is bloated and 95 isn't. And that's that.

And if you even count WindowsME as an OS option I'll have another two pages of things to yell at you :)

Sounds like you have an unstable system (hardware or other software). 5.5 is faster and more stable than 4.0. And 6.0 is slighly more so (almost like Opera).

Excessive software crashing is usually related to other things you have done with your system. For example, ZDOOM had a memory bug that roasted my 98 system instantly - my desktop would not refresh. Explorer would either crash or stop responding. This is finally resolved for me in 1.23b24, but other systems most likely had other weird symptoms. This was NOT an OS issue.

Reinstalling some things is out of your control (usually these are not in the "remove programs" section). It just "knows" it's all there and in effect nothing is really done when you "reinstall". So it's very difficult to fix damaged components without starting all over. MS details some common problems and how to replace the offending module(s). It is a royal pain to troubleshoot and they should do something about it.

Win98 is about the same boot speed as 95 OSR2 and about the same system requirements (it's not really that different - hint same win32API). (98 has many cool ways of controlling the system, plus handy tools like msconfig and USB support.

I installed vanilla 98 on a DX4/100 cause I needed a slow benchmark machine for DeePsea. Boots fine on 16mb although now I put in 48mb - but these are paging issues. It boot in 30 seconds with about 10 secs more till the hourglass goes away (not counting bios time). How fast does you 66 boot?

The 98 menus are a bit of a pain, although you can rearrange them into categories fairly easily so they go to the right too (you do know about that?). The mix of the 2 (as on XP and ME too - as I recall) is great. Not being able to edit them easy on 95 is NOT great.

I've timed boot speed before in various arguments - they all boil down to not comparing apples to apples. Usually people forget they have a bunch of "startup" tasks they forgot about and other things they think don't matter.

You have to have the same vid, disk (same fat), cpu, memory, startup tasks, etc. to make a valid comparison.

Other issues are personal taste. I happen to like all of them:)

However, it is all about progress and cool new things. You may be happier with that black and white DOS box - now we know that not true, right:)

FYI, my loaded networked XP boots in 30 seconds (counting bios time), how fast is your XP? (And this is a "slow" debug beta version no less).

Deep, all the fancy things you and Lut do to troubleshoot, I can't.
I got a lazyman's way. It's called "PartitionMagic 5.0".
(AMD750/256mb/13G Maxtor/GF-32mb/IomegaZIP/HPcdrw/Sony32xCD/LCD).

When I get PC set up, all is running like a charm, I tell PM to make a "mirror copy" of the (3 or 4 gig) Primary Active partition I'm presently in. It does so.
Then I tell it to hide that mirror somewhere on hard drive. It does so.
Then I start messing, experimenting, or whatever in my Primary partition.
If I screw it up -- I wake PM up, and tell it "I'm all screwed up, erase the Primary Active partition I'm in (including all Files, Windows, Everything!) and copy the mirror into my now blank, formatted partition".
It does so. And sets my partition once again, as Primary Active partition.
And I'm back in business, ready and eager for my next total screw-up &lt;g&gt;).
fragg

I stopped using PartitionMagic 5.0 and 6.0 when I found out they had a lot of trouble with disks over 25GB in size. Basically, once you passed that 25GB marker, it would screw up the partition tables. For example, some of the times I've mirror one hard drive to another and resized the partition to full size, and exit, the partition tables are so screwed up even PartitionMagic cannot read them. Norton Utilities' DiskEdit, however, can. It told me I had a 28GB partition, a 13GB partition, a 116GB partition and a 254GB partition, all on a 25GB drive. The data was there so I just hard to rearrange the partition info with DiskEdit, but it's still a pain and I'm still looking for some new partitioning software as I write this.

deepteam said:

No the system wasn't unstable, IE5+ was. I had totally reinstalled Windows98 fresh 4 of those times when IE5+ screwed it up.

I'll just say that I reinstalled Windows95 twice in 3 years (each time due to something I specifically messed up) and I reinstalled Windows98 about 9 times in 8 months. So I put 95 back on. End of problem.

The only complaint I can possibly think of with the Windows95 start menus is not being able to change the order the icons come in. I never really had a problem with that but I have grown a little used to organizing them in my own special way. I like a few of the ME interface changes, yet only because they are what should have been there since the first release of Windows95. They should be available in a Windows Update. I'm not letting that horrible horrible ME virus anywhere near my computer :)

I'm not much of a reinstaller myself. I like to keep a fresh drive image of working installed software, and when something messes up my system, just reload the whole thing, copy my files back off my backup CDs and start fresh.

They say 95 and 98 should be similar boot times, but they aren't. My 486/66 boots 95 in 12 seconds, and loads the desktop and start menu in about 4, followed by another 6 for McAfee VShield but that thing sucks anyways. The 486 has a PCI video card with some calibration stuff in the display properties, 32 MB RAM, a SCSI scanner card, sound card, modem and network card. The only different thing on the Celeron500/Win98 machine (well it was 98/95, now XP) is the video card (a TNT2) and of course the processor/motherboard. However, Windows95 took about 5 seconds to boot and the desktop popped up instantly. And THAT is how I like it ;)

Also, I do prefer my DOS boxes thank you very much. And my Windows3.11. That is how computers should run. Plain old performance and nothing else.

Let me reboot the XP and find out...