What boom/mbf ports have stable savegame formats?

[Danfun64]

I haven't been keeping track of the classic Doom community in a while. I've known there were ports that aimed to aim at specific standards (like Chocolate Doom for Vanilla), ports with continuous updates that aren't particularly aiming for things like demo or savegame compatibility (like GZDoom), and some that split the difference, aiming for high demo compatibility but (AFAIK) not necessarily savegame compatibility (like PrBoom-Plus). 

I've known about Woof (which aims to be an enhanced MBF) for a while, but I haven't given it much thought due to its lack of multiplayer support (for whatever reason I'm fascinated by the idea of recording multiplayer -complevel 9 or -complevel 11 demos). I've recently heard of ReBoom (which aims for Boom compatibility), it's Experimental branch (which is perhaps equivalent to what Crispy is to Chocolate in terms of adding more features and raising limits) and Pooch (an MBF port which is AFAIK more conservative than Woof).

Out of curiosity, do Woof, Pooch, ReBoom and/or ReBoom Experimental have 1. Full savegame compatibility with their DOS counterparts like Chocolate and Crispy do, preferably no matter how the ports are compiled or what platforms, architectures, or even endians are used? (provided limits aren't broken of course) and/or 2. Compatibility with PrBoom-Plus or DSDA Doom when recording demos?

Edited November 17, 2021 by Danfun64

[rfomin]

56 minutes ago, Danfun64 said:

Out of curiosity, do Woof, Pooch, ReBoom and/or ReBoom Experimental have 1. Full savegame compatibility with their DOS counterparts like Chocolate and Crispy do, preferably no matter how the ports are compiled or what platforms, architectures, or even endians are used? (provided limits aren't broken of course) and/or 2. Compatibility with PrBoom-Plus or DSDA Doom when recording demos?

1. Woof can load DOS MBF savegame. 2. Woof is compatible with PrBoom+/DSDA-Doom complevels 2, 3, 4, 9, 11

There is also a multiplayer branch on GitHub with netcode from Chocolate Doom.

[Gibbon]

I can answer for Pooch and ReBOOM.

 

1. savegame compatibility is not supported with DOS BOOM.  Since ReBOOM is more of a conservative continuation of Boom 2.02 (it is at its core original Boom 2.02 code).  The same goes for Pooch, which aims to be MBF frozen in  time in 1998.  But again savegame compatibility wasn't on the cards.

 

2. Both are not compatible with anything outside of their source port.  Original Boom demos are perfectly supported on ReBOOM but I don't support anything else (just as original Boom didn't).  Same goes for Pooch, either Boom or MBF demos (actual MBF demos not just compat).

I will look into making them compatible with their DOS savegame counterparts.  You have me intrigued now.

 

Also, no multiplayer.  I'm not a net code engineer and I won't touch it :)

Edited November 17, 2021 by Gibbon

[Danfun64]

I'm not sure if I explained myself properly when talking about compatibility. Basically, I'm curious if demos recorded in ReBoom can be played back in PrBoom-Plus/DSDA-Doom with -complevel 9 (boom demos) and demos recorded in Pooch can be played back in PrBoom-Plus/DSDA-Doom with -complevel 11 (MBF demos). Though given what you said, I'm going to guess "no".

As for Woof, it seems that ATM "Savegame compatibility across different platforms and releases has only been added in Woof! 6.0.0. This version is able to read (but not save) savegames from the previous version and even MBF.exe, but may be incompatible with intermediate Woof! releases." So compatibility with saves isn't guaranteed yet, but it looks like it's being worked on.

[BoxY]

Any demo recorded on a port that accurately emulates a complevel will play back correctly on any other port that supports it, that's basically why complevels exist. If they don't sync for any reason it's because of a serious problem with the port, which is why ports that are used for serious recording get heavily tested between updates to confirm that they still sync with a wide range of demos. Save games are a different thing entirely, it's rare that anyone needs to copy them between ports, so it's possible but definitely not guaranteed they that would interchange.

[rfomin]

4 hours ago, Danfun64 said:

So compatibility with saves isn't guaranteed yet, but it looks like it's being worked on.

Save compatibility is guaranteed since 6.0.0, but saves made with Woof<5.2.0 may not work. DOS MBF is also supported, but only for loading. In other words, Woof supports loading saves that run in DOS MBF and Woof versions since 5.2.0, but saves only in the latest savegame format.

We can add full compatibility with all savegame versions, but this required a new UI/command line interface and we decided it wasn't worth it. The main goal was backward compatibility - for example, a user who updated Woof can always load their old saves from a previous version.

[Gibbon]

9 hours ago, Danfun64 said:

I'm not sure if I explained myself properly when talking about compatibility. Basically, I'm curious if demos recorded in ReBoom can be played back in PrBoom-Plus/DSDA-Doom with -complevel 9 (boom demos) and demos recorded in Pooch can be played back in PrBoom-Plus/DSDA-Doom with -complevel 11 (MBF demos). Though given what you said, I'm going to guess "no".

As for Woof, it seems that ATM "Savegame compatibility across different platforms and releases has only been added in Woof! 6.0.0. This version is able to read (but not save) savegames from the previous version and even MBF.exe, but may be incompatible with intermediate Woof! releases." So compatibility with saves isn't guaranteed yet, but it looks like it's being worked on.

I don't test it but if those ports accurately emulate Boom 2.02 then they should playback fine.

 

EDIT: Well..  this is embarrassing :) it seems in the last few of my commits I broke demo compatibility with all but itself :)

Fixed in a commit just now, demo's are again compatible with DOS Boom, PRBoom/DSDA/FDWL..  thanks Danfun64!

 

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by Gibbon