PrBoom+ name bikeshedding

[Linguica]

Can we repeal and replace prboom+ yet? It's named for a coder who has been gone for decades, and has a suffix denoting it as a fork by another coder who has also been gone for years. It is also very Google unfriendly.

[HavoX]

GZPrBoom+? No, wait, that would cause confusion...

Edited June 16, 2019 by HavoX

[Graf Zahl]

I wouldn't mind renaming it, in fact from a personal standpoint that should really be done.

The problems I see are more on the "PR" (pun intended) side. Knowing how people tick, renaming the port might make take it off their radar, so it'd require a lot of effort to increase its visibility again. So, it's something for later, right now it'd do more harm than good.

 

What's important right now is to make it known as the actively maintained version of PrBoom so that it can gain a user base. Once we know that this has happened, yes, a rename would be in order to give it its own identity.

 

 

Just to show how important it is to have visibility, here's a little exercise. By coincidence I was comparing the download numbers of a few ports just before posting this. Let's have a little fun and guess the order of the following ports by popularity (i.e. download activity). I'll post the correct order later, but let me say right now that visibility is the major factor here and the true order was not even close to what I would have expected, but when considering visibility it makes a lot of sense!

 

Eternity

EDGE

Doom Retro

Crispy Doom

PrBoom+

 

 

 

 

 

[ReaperAA]

13 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Just to show how important it is to have visibility, here's a little exercise. By coincidence I was comparing the download numbers of a few ports just before posting this. Let's have a little fun and guess the order of the following ports by popularity (i.e. download activity). I'll post the correct order later, but let me say right now that visibility is the major factor here and the true order was not even close to what I would have expected, but when considering visibility it makes a lot of sense!

 

Eternity

EDGE

Doom Retro

Crispy Doom

PrBoom+

 

My guess is that their popularity(i.e. download activity) might be in this order:

PrBoom+

Crispy Doom

EDGE

Doom Retro

Eternity Engine

 

I am pretty sure Eternity Engine is going to be at the bottom of this list DESPITE being the one with most overall features.

 

I just HATE how underrated Eternity is. People, please give that port some love.

Edited June 16, 2019 by ReaperAA

[seed]

51 minutes ago, HavoX said:

GZPrBoom+? No, wait, that would cause confusion...

 

ZBoom maybe?

[TheMightyHeracross]

I would advise against any names that would associate the port with (G)ZDoom, for two reasons:

 

1) It would be inaccurate, since PrBoom+ has very little connection to the ZDoom family.

2) It would definitely scare away PrBoom+'s more traditional userbase.

Edited June 16, 2019 by TheMightyHeracross

[Beezle]

Thanks for the update Graf Zahl, maybe GeeZ-Ed Boom Plus lol.

[ReaperAA]

I have an easy answer. Call it PrBoom++ (PrBoom-plus-plus)

[Bauul]

You could just stick an extra "o" in there and call it ProBoom+

 

 

[Revenant100]

Ride the wave and call it Boom Eternal, aka BoomE, acronymized as BE. The inevitable copyright takedown from Bethesda/ZeniMax will result in instant free publicity.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Revenant100

[Graf Zahl]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

 

My guess is that their popularity(i.e. download activity) might be in this order:

PrBoom+

Crispy Doom

EDGE

Doom Retro

Eternity Engine

 

I am pretty sure Eternity Engine is going to be at the bottom of this list DESPITE being the one with most overall features.

 

Actually, your assessment of Eternity was spot on. The rest - not so much.

 

The actual order is:

 

Doom Retro

PrBoom+

(here's a huge gap)

Crispy Doom

EDGE

Eternity

 

where two things have to be said: PrBoom's last official release is 3 years old, this is the sole reason it's below Doom Retro. The same most likely applies to Eternity and EDGE, where EDGE also has higher numbers due to more frequent releases. And concerning visibility, what sets Doom Retro apart? Actually, quite simple: It has its own website where it advertises itself properly. It also properly advertises its features as being enhancements for playing existing material. The rest of the order here also quite closely matches my impression of "visibility." PrBoom has a long legacy, Crispy Doom has an active pinned development thread, and EDGE got the same on the ZDoom forums. But Eternity...

 

I could go into lengthy treatments why it is on the last place here, but that'd mean going off-topic. Just one thing: It is, for all intents and purposes "invisible" - both by lack of material to showcase its features and by how it presents itself to the public (No, a wiki on a domain called 'youfailit' doesn't help much at all, as doesn't a subforum that has 'eternity.youfailit.net' as its sole description. That's hardly inviting. It tells nothing about the content.)

 

So one thing is clear: Sooner or later this port will require its own website, but again: first it needs to go off the ground. Right now a pinned development thread is already a good thing. :)

 

11 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

I have an easy answer. Call it PrBoom++ (PrBoom-plus-plus)

 

Nah, that'd somehow imply that it's just PrBoom, converted to C++. Not that this isn't something I might do later, but that's not good advertisement.

Trust me, once things pick up, a unique name (no "Pr" in it!) will be chosen because at the right time a new name can increase visibility. Right now a different name would do the opposite.

 

1 minute ago, Revenant100 said:

Ride the wave and call it Boom Eternal, aka BoomE, acronymized as BE. The inevitable copyright takedown from Bethesda will result in instant free publicity.

 

I have been wondering: What have the makers of Eternal Doom to say about "Doom Eternal". Isn't it too bad that they haven't registered it as a trademark? :D:D:D

 

[CorianderCastor]

I mainly see recommendations of GZDoom and Chocolate on other websites, like Steam forums and Reddit. Don't see a lot of mentioning of EDGE or EE, but do see Crispy, PrBoom+, and Retro mentioned. Of course that "play Doom" info graphic I see floating around recommends GZDoom, Zandronum, or PrBoom+. I'd assume EDGE is at the bottom, but it does publicize itself on Facebook, and I bet it gets some ModDB love. So I'm going to assume, almost definitely wrongly, that the order is:

 

Crispy

PrBoom+

Retro

EE

EDGE

 

but yeah, EE, despite having its own subforum, could be the lowest, and EDGE isn't even stickied. Also, the engines with Doom in the name seem like they'd pop up more often in Google searches.

 

Hmm, but Crispy and Retro aren't on Doomworld's source port page, and some people do mention that page on Steam and Reddit.

 

To add to the bikeshedding: XBoom, like eXtended Boom. Or Boom-X, if that's better, and less XBone.

 

edit: and my Internet has to go down before I can post this, and the answers are revealed, of course EE is at the bottom, of course it is. Should have realized Retro is at top, people mentioning its Sigil support for weeks, and the website, and I even follow its Twitter! Shows that marketing works.

Edited June 16, 2019 by PaquoCastor
Fast typos rectified

[Graf Zahl]

10 minutes ago, PaquoCastor said:

I mainly see recommendations of GZDoom and Chocolate on other websites, like Steam forums and Reddit. Don't see a lot of mentioning of EDGE or EE, but do see Crispy, PrBoom+, and Retro mentioned. Of course that "play Doom" info graphic I see floating around recommends GZDoom, Zandronum, or PrBoom+. I'd assume EDGE is at the bottom, but it does publicize itself on Facebook, and I bet it gets some ModDB love.

 

That's interesting. I would have liked to check Chocolate Doom's download numbers as well - but it hosts them on its own site where I can't get the counters - unlike Github and Sourceforge. Would be interesting to compare, though.

 

 

10 minutes ago, PaquoCastor said:

Hmm, but Crispy and Retro aren't on Doomworld's source port page, and some people do mention that page on Steam and Reddit.

 

They still do? That thing is years out of date...

 

10 minutes ago, PaquoCastor said:

Should have realized Retro is at top, people mentioning its Sigil support for weeks, and the website, and I even follow its Twitter! Shows that marketing works.

 

I think I need a marketing expert... :D

But surely, the Sigil support certainly helped - although its numbers were high long before that.

 

[CorianderCastor]

1 minute ago, Graf Zahl said:

They still do? That thing is years out of date...

 

Yes they do, I found it shocking myself, when there's a perfectly good wiki that's updated regularly. I wish I remember where I saw that.

 

I noticed that during discussions of Sigil on other forums, people kept saying that sigil.wad was only compatible with GZDoom. Almost as if the common person doesn't know what an Eternity Engine is. Though people started mentioning Doom Retro after a while. That reminds me of another engine people don't seem to know about: Classic RBDoom3 BFG, but that's technically a Doom 3 BFG engine, so that's part of the problem.

 

Also, I forgot I wanted to mention that some wads have EE features that desynch PrBoom+ recorded demos during playback, such as Ancient Aliens.

[DoomedDude]

Also, about renaming the source port. I kind of like the name PrBoom+, but that's just me among lots of other users who probably would want to rename it. The original idea behind PrBoom+ was to add limit removing features that the original Doom engine had along with the use of demo recording that no other engine at the time really had to the level of PrBoom+ without the loss of compatibility.

 

Maybe we could create a name based off that?

[Shadow Hog]

As far as the name goes, I was thinking, IDK, UMBoom or something. I know GZBoom was already suggested but that's too close to GZDoom for comfort, as was already noted in response. UMBoom is pretty simple: it's PrBoom+, but with UMAPINFO.

 

(EDIT: removing the rest of this post because it doesn't belong in a thread about naming)

Edited June 17, 2019 by Shadow Hog

[Xaser]

Kaboom.

[Edward850]

PrBoom+

Edited June 17, 2019 by Edward850

[fraggle]

Prboom Pill, BFG Edition replaced the cross.

[Shadow Hog]

1 minute ago, fraggle said:

Prboom Pill, BFG Edition replaced the cross.

PrBoom💊?

[TheMightyHeracross]

12 hours ago, Linguica said:

It's named for a coder who has been gone for decades, and has a suffix denoting it as a fork by another coder who has also been gone for years.

It actually looks like @entryway's been lurking quite recently.

I wonder what they would have to say about these recent developments.

Edited June 17, 2019 by TheMightyHeracross

[siteod]

DemoDoom

Really though, if the plan is to just make additions like umapinfo compat I think it should stay prboom+ for name recognition. If in the future people are actually going to restart active development it should probably be given a different name to denote the fork, like GZBoom or something

[Grain of Salt]

13 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

I wouldn't mind renaming it

 

12 hours ago, TheMightyHeracross said:

I would advise against any names that would associate the port with (G)ZDoom

 

1 hour ago, siteod said:

Really though, if the plan is to just make additions like umapinfo compat

 

Hey. Graf's mapinfo fork has not become The Main Prboom+™. It's just one of at least three personal forks that each add approximately one feature and have uncertain future prospects. In fact, the others have actually fixed long-standing bugs (with music and friction effects), so surely they would be better choices if you really want to look at prb+ development as a game of pass the parcel.

 

You should definitely rename the mapinfo fork to keep this kind of confusion from happening though. I suggest "Mapinfo Fork".

Edited June 17, 2019 by Grain of Salt

[Spectre01]

This seems to be the most likely version to be developed going forward.

[TheMightyHeracross]

@Grain of Salt

To be fair I thought we were specifically talking about the UMAPINFO fork. That context is kinda lost now that this discussion has been moved out of that fork's thread.

 

Again, it looks like @entryway is still around (even if he's just lurking), so I don't see how other people would go about changing the name of PrBoom+ proper.

Edited June 17, 2019 by TheMightyHeracross

[siteod]

23 minutes ago, Grain of Salt said:

Hey. Graf's mapinfo fork has not become The Main Prboom+™. It's just one of at least three personal forks that each add approximately one feature and have uncertain future prospects. In fact, the others have actually fixed long-standing bugs (with music and friction effects), so surely they would be better choices if you really want to look at prb+ development as a game of pass the parcel.

  

 

 

look, i just eventually would like demo capable source port that also has gzdoom's graphics features

[TheMightyHeracross]

But that is not the focus of that fork. It's just adding the UMAPINFO feature.

 

Adding GZDoom-tier graphics into PrBoom+ itself is both unlikely and, it did ever happen somehow against all odds, very sure to anger a lot of people in the community.

 

Also, people recording demos- I assume mostly speedrunners- probably wouldn't want to slow their game down with excessive graphical features anyway.

Edited June 17, 2019 by TheMightyHeracross

[Philnemba]

Why not PrBoom Super Plus?

[Spectre01]

Any visual additions would obviously be optional, similar to how they are in Eternity with the extra particles and whatnot. The GL renderer in PRBoom+ needs to, at the very least, handle projectile translucency without loading an external dehacked file. Said file still breaks translucent projectiles behind translucent walls so there is no proper GL projectile translucency like there is in Software mode.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Spectre01
Added more projectile translucency

[Benjogami]

I think DemoDoom is pretty good, or whatever shorter version (DemDoom, DeDoom, DDoom). 

 

clDoom?

 

I think retaining "Boom" in the name is undesirable, since Boom is just one of the complevels and "Doom" should probably be in the name somewhere.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Benjogami