PrBoom+ name bikeshedding

[ketmar]

"Retro Crispy EDGE of PrBoom+ Developement for the Whole Eternity (Totally Not GZDoom)"

 

this should make it.

[Doomkid]

Is Boom 2 off the table? "Pee our boom plus" is phonetically really unpleasant and always has been imo.

 

You know how it goes with renaming ports though.. The amount of dimwits who ask "Where's Skulltag?" and such to this very day is astonishing, sometimes when you point out that Zandronum IS Skulltag they may even try to argue with you and claim the two are entirely separate things or some other nonsense, it's happened to me multiple times. Just bear that in mind!

[Reisal]

I have a couple suggestions:

 

Decor (Latin: Beauty, Grace)

Gloria (Latin: Fame, Renown, Glory)

Inceptum (Latin: Beginning*, attempt, enterprise)

Novus (Latin: New, fresh, young, inexperienced, revived, refreshed.)

Sanctus (Latin: Holy, Sacred, Saint)

 

*suggested word

 

[Budoka]

Here's perhaps a crazy suggestion, but if people still rely on the Doomworld source port page for information, then maybe that page should be updated to match the wiki content ? While I'm here, I must say I'm still confused as to the differences between PrBoom+, Crispy Doom and Doom retro in terms of DOOM.EXE/DOOM2.EXE behavior accuracy. Some people told me Crispy Doom is more accurate than PrBoom+, but can't figure out what it could possibly improve that's not already on the mark with PrBoom+, especially when using proper -complevel parameters. As for Doom Retro, I just have no idea.

[Shadow Hog]

My understanding was that Crispy Doom was Chocolate Doom with a raised resolution (hence it looks more "crispy", and the name also evokes the image of crisped rice, which is a common inclusion in chocolate bars). I don't think it's Boom-supporting but this is me speaking without actually researching to confirm if it is or not, so I could very well be wrong on that matter.

 

I am just as lost as you about Doom Retro however.

[Spectre01]

Crispy Doom is limit-removing and, IRC, has some extra (optional) visual enhancements not present in in Vanilla or PRBoom+.

[Doom64hunter]

13 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

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

 

 

I have a theory for why Doom Retro enjoys such popularity.

 

Put yourself into the shoes of your average user. You've heard about this awesome Doom community and how much content it has created, but you don't really know any specifics. So the first thing you enter into the Google search bar is "Doom". 99% of the results are going to be related to Doom 2016, so you try to specify the search by appending "retro" to the search string.

 

Et voilà, the first result is the port in question.

[banjiepixel]

Would PrBoom Ultra be too unoriginal/boring for the new name?

[Graf Zahl]

3 hours 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.

 

This is actually a real problem, if those people do not present their work more prominently. All things considered, the best course of action is to get these developers together and instead of each doing their own work, pool their resources to create a TRUE successor. It's not something I want to do alone, but if there's others as well who are interested in advancing the port, all the better for the future.

 

 

3 hours ago, Grain of Salt said:

 

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

 

If it remains a "fork" it's dead. Let's not delude ourselves here. This won't work if things don't get consolidated - for any of those forks - because each user will choose the one with the one feature they want to have, resulting in fragmentation which will ultimately keep the base port remaining the sole reference.

 

The entire UMAPINFO feature still needs to gets its kinks ironed out, it's not really ready for prime-time, unless it gets tested a bit more.

 

Regarding the name I think the whole point is to get rid of the "Pr" prefix because it refers to the nick of a person who has quit development a long, long time ago.

My main interest would be to get more "universal" features in, e.g. UDMF, some "universal" animation definition (like ZDoom's ANIMDEFS but with a saner syntax) and similar things, so if it goes that route, how about UniBoom?

 

[Doom64hunter]

If there is going to be a new actively maintained fork of PrBoom+, then I think a (minor) name change might be appropriate. Though I wouldn't deviate far from the "Boom" name considering that it currently seems to be the go-to for playing Boom-compatible wads, and because PrBoom+ is already pretty well-known, especially among speedrunning circles. If the name changes completely then you might very well end up with another Skulltag/Zandronum situation.

 

As for the topic of popularity, I don't think visibility in terms of name is the only factor. It also very much depends on the kind of niche each port fills and how well-known by word of mouth it is. GZDoom for instance fills the niche of newschool port that most modern mods run on, while Zandronum and ZDaemon fill the niche of new-/oldschool multiplayer respectively. Chocolate Doom fills the niche of coming as close to vanilla as possible (with limits intact), Crispy Doom fills the niche of limit-removing vanilla and PrBoom+ fills the niche of Boom-compatibility, without many fancy bells and whistles attached.

 

Eternity and Edge both have a lot of features, however most of them can be replicated in GZDoom in some form, and there are only few wads that require these ports to run. Therefore they don't really fill a niche that other ports cannot offer in some shape, and as such, few people use them actively. This also directly leads to these ports usually not being recommended in these big "So you want to play some Doom" spreadsheets.

 

Doom Retro appears to be the odd one out, though here I really do think it might be the name doing the port a lot of service, and its nature of being more like a mod than your regular run-of-the-mill port, which might also attract more people.

[j4rio]

PickledRaspberryDoom, given the fixation of doom port names with edibles

[Doom Marine]

PrBoom+ is sub-optimal for brand name recognition outside our little community.

 

What is stopping the community from adopting...

 

Boom+

[ketmar]

PerfectBoom.

 

i mean, 'cmon, you HAVE to give it a catchy name, or people will ignore it. and here we have both catchy name, and the answer to "what port is a perfect one to play Boom maps?" question. ;-)

Edited June 17, 2019 by ketmar

[Graf Zahl]

4 minutes ago, Doom64hunter said:

Eternity and Edge both have a lot of features, however most of them can be replicated in GZDoom in some form, and there are only few wads that require these ports to run. Therefore they don't really fill a niche that other ports cannot offer in some shape, and as such, few people use them actively. This also directly leads to these ports usually not being recommended in these big "So you want to play some Doom" spreadsheets.

 

I mostly agree with that assessment. I once said that I could see a niche where Eternity could thrive, and that is to make itself compatible with older, simpler ZDoom mods, position itself as a more advanced demo compatible engine - and use that as a jump pad to advance further, but apparently nobody believes in that niche. Of course it'd require that Eternity implements the needed features, like reading ZDoom MAPINFOs/SNDINFOs and making slopes fully functional.

 

But as things are, Eternity will eternally face the chicken-and-egg problem because since there are no mods there are no users, and because there are no users there are no mods. Aside from a handful of exceptions, what can be played with it can also be played with PrBoom+, giving very little incentive to try it out. It cannot magically gain the users, but with a bit of work could gain better support for existing mods, and were I responsible for the port, that what I'd try to do.

 

For GZDoom it worked beautifully in 2005 when I tried something similar and made it work with the two high profile Legacy mods (Nimrod and Hi-Tech Hell) which immediately attracted quite a bit of people who suddenly were able to play these in an environment they were far more comfortable with. The same might happen if those old ZDoom classics were suddenly available to players more oriented toward 'classic' gameplay and demo recorders.

 

But for God's sake - as a very first step, see to it that the subforum gets a better description! Having just a link in there with a funny-looking URL is the best kind of anti-advertisement imaginable!

 

 

4 minutes ago, Doom64hunter said:

 

Doom Retro appears to be the odd one out, though here I really do think it might be the name doing the port a lot of service, and its nature of being more like a mod than your regular run-of-the-mill port, which might also attract more people.

 

The name may help somewhat but I think it's the only port that's doing something *interesting* outside the beaten path that could attract a regular person.

 

3 minutes ago, ketmar said:

PerfectBoom.

 

i mean, 'cmon, you HAVE to give it a catchy name, or people will ignore it. and here we have both catchy name, and the answer to "what port is a perfect one to play Boom maps?" question. ;-)

 

"Perfection" is something deeply subjective. For some it means playing Boom content with settings as close to Boom.exe as possible, for some it means playing them with high resolution software rendering and yet others see "perfection" as using hardware rendering with all bells and whistles.

So, naming a product "perfect" normally reeks of arrogance. No, thank you!

 

[ketmar]

44 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

"Perfection" is something deeply subjective.

meh. if the author says that his product is perfect, many people will agree. and then they will convince others. hey, you know the rules, it's not like i should teach you doing business!

Edited June 17, 2019 by ketmar

[Graf Zahl]

That works if lots of your customers are sheep. See Apple for an example. But even they aren't immune - see the recent episode about their $999 monitor stand.

 

There's lots of people who do not like this kind of thing so it may easily backfire if your naming/pricing/whatever of the product and customer expectations do not align.

 

[xvertigox]

Is a name change needed? Being named after coder(s) who aren't around anymore doesn't seem like a good reason to me. If I look up prboom+ on DDG all the results relate directly to the port. Seems like (arguably) zero gain for a lot energy used.

[Graf Zahl]

The name change entirely depends on whether it can be made a continuation or a separate project. I still have hope it can be made a continuation of PrBoom+, in which case a name change is not really needed, but only time will tell. It's certainly not an urgent matter - and most of what has been suggested is ridiculous anyway.

 

[fabian]

16 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

Is a name change needed? Being named after coder(s) who aren't around anymore doesn't seem like a good reason to me. If I look up prboom+ on DDG all the results relate directly to the port. Seems like (arguably) zero gain for a lot energy used.

 

I agree. Nobody cares what the "Pr" stands for, it is just accepted as part of the name of that port.

[xvertigox]

4 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

The name change entirely depends on whether it can be made a continuation or a separate project. I still have hope it can be made a continuation of PrBoom+, in which case a name change is not really needed, but only time will tell. It's certainly not an urgent matter - and most of what has been suggested is ridiculous anyway.

 

 

So the crux is how functionally different the fork/iteration is? That makes sense. I'm curious as to what niche a heavily expanded prboom would fill. Personally, I like the name prboom+ and don't want to have to have yet another port but if it accomplished something dramatically novel and unique then I would have no problem with it.

 

Quote

PrBoom+ is sub-optimal for brand name recognition outside our little community.

 

I submit that the fork be name GABBO.

[Graf Zahl]

3 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

 

So the crux is how functionally different the fork/iteration is? That makes sense. I'm curious as to what niche a heavily expanded prboom would fill.

 

No niche - just a reference port for new features that may get common support among more feature-rich ports. Basically a continuation of Boom.

It should remain the go-to port for demo playback and "classic" gameplay without any restrictions.

 

[xvertigox]

3 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

No niche - just a reference port for new features that may get common support among more feature-rich ports. Basically a continuation of Boom.

It should remain the go-to port for demo playback and "classic" gameplay without any restrictions.

 

 

In that case I'll raise both hands for prboom+. If it sits within the same niche with a slightly (?) expanded scope then a version increment would suffice IMO.

[fabian]

6 hours ago, Grain of Salt said:

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.

 

 

Could you add pointers to these other two personal forks so that we may consider consolidating their features into the new "common main fork"?

[Loud Silence]

Boom must be kept in name, so Boomerang should do. Boom is back!

 

I wish much more people to recognize and admire Eternity Engine. I love that port!

[Gez]

Super PrBoom+ II Turbo Deluxe: Sigil of BFG Edition

[ReaperAA]

16 minutes ago, fabian said:

 

Could you add pointers to these other two personal forks so that we may consider consolidating their features into the new "common main fork"?

 

I think one of them could be this one:

 

[seed]

UBoom/UBoom+ maybe?

[Spectre01]

-longtics for -cl9 in @cybermind's port are certainly nice to have. It's 2019 people! I should be able to move my mouse with low sensitivity and have it respond accordingly!

[Graf Zahl]

I'll check his stuff when I'm back home. It's all on Github so hopefully a merge should be easy enough to do.

 

 

[KOF_Guy]

PrBoom+ Ultimate Burst Omega Edition or simply PrBoomΩ, it sound fun to me.