Ancient Aliens Boom compatible

[TheBlueBalloon]

19 minutes ago, Gregor said:

Yes. Umapinfo is just a file that contains meta-data specific to a pwad. So every pwad needs its own specific umapinfo file that contains data like map names, sky texture, next map and so forth for each individual map slot. You need this because things like map slots, intermission screens, sky textures and episode structure are hardcoded in Doom, so you couldn't change any of this stuff normally. Zdoom-derived ports use their own standard with MAPINFO and Eternity uses yet another one with EMAPINFO. UMAPINFO attempts to create a unified cross-platform mapinfo format supported by most sourceports.

Got it.  So I can copy and paste the same umapinfo into new folders for new wads if I wanted to?

[TheBlueBalloon]

27 minutes ago, Mr Masker said:

It has it's uses. Many modern wads are using Umap for functions such as forced pistol start, episodes, extra levels, etc. Plus many Umapinfo patches have released such as the previously mentioned AAliens one, plus many others you can find in the previously linked thread.

 

EDIT: To clarify, DSDA comes with Umapinfo capabilities it's not a seperate thing. It's just the patches themselves that are seperate

Interestingly, I tried running the wad without umapinfo and the custom episodes weren't there.  When I added umapinfo, they appeared, so I guess it is necessary.  Though the Giorgio tsouklas speech didn't come in, unfortunately.

Edited July 30, 2022 by TheBlueBalloon

[Gregor]

26 minutes ago, TheBlueBalloon said:

Got it.  So I can copy and paste the same umapinfo into new folders for new wads if I wanted to?

No, no. That's exactly what you can NOT do. :) You need a different umapinfo file for each wad. A umapinfo file is always specific to an individual pwad. Ancient Aliens needs a umapinfo file made for Ancient Aliens, containing only info about Ancient Aliens, while Eviternity or Valiant for instance would need there own individual umap file each.

 

For Ancient Aliens, umapinfo only really contains data to create the episode structure, which Doom 2 normally lacks, as well as changing the placement of the intermission screens. In vanilla Doom 2 the intermission screens always appear between maps 6-7, 11-12, 20-21 as well as 15-31 & 31-32. But in Ancient Aliens the intermission screens are supposed to appear between completely different maps. Umapinfo lets you change that as well as skip the intermission screen's default placements.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Gregor

[Gregor]

1 hour ago, TheBlueBalloon said:

Interestingly, I tried running the wad without umapinfo and the custom episodes weren't there.  When I added umapinfo, they appeared, so I guess it is necessary.  Though the Giorgio tsouklas speech didn't come in, unfortunately.

The Giorgio Tsouklas speech cannot be implemented through umapinfo, it requires ACS, which is not supported by PrBoom+ or DSDA. As skillsaw hinted at in his post above, this could perhaps be implemented through MBF21 and/or DEHEXTRA, both of which DSDA supports, but as of yet it hasn't been done.

[Mr Masker]

14 hours ago, TheBlueBalloon said:

Got it.  So I can copy and paste the same umapinfo into new folders for new wads if I wanted to?

You can find Umap's for other mods in the previously linked, "UMAPINFO Apreciation Thread".

 

For clarification, the UMAPINFO patch itself adds in the episodes and etc, it doesn't unlock compatability with episodes inside the Megawad.

 

For example, There's a Umap patch for adding episodes to Scythe 2, which doesn't normally have episodes. The Umap patch adds those in itself.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Mr Masker

[Foodles]

Whilst we're on this topic - can anyone please explain to me how the music on map01 only starts after smoking the pipe in prboom+? I'm wondering if I can use something like this in a map I'm making where the music will change after the player passes a certain point.

[skillsaw]

5 minutes ago, Foodles said:

Whilst we're on this topic - can anyone please explain to me how the music on map01 only starts after smoking the pipe in prboom+? I'm wondering if I can use something like this in a map I'm making where the music will change after the player passes a certain point.

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/MUSINFO

 

There are two music tracks defined in the MUSINFO lump for MAP01. The first is an MP3 of ambient wind noise that plays at the lodge; the second is stewboy's music track, which starts playing once you teleport. Check the placement and thing types of the music changer things in the map to see how it works.

[Human Being]

19 hours ago, skillsaw said:

Yes, precisely.

 

I would have also used MBF21 and/or DEHEXTRA to do the wolf howl and etc. sound effects. I'd love to update aaliens.wad itself with these changes, but updating a six-year old wad file that has lots of demos, is frequently played online, and already has a very wide distribution causes a lot of headaches that I don't want to/can't deal with.

It could be viewed as a novelty "nice-to-have" update as well, not necessarily having the intent of replacing the original. I know many electronic music producers that do this with their tunes: They release "Remastered" versions for free of originally vinyl only or early digital versions, b/c technology has progressed and their skills have progressed in the 5, 10, 15 years since they're leased their tunes. e.g. aaliens2022.wad

At the same time I'm not sure if there's some unwritten rule about these things in the Doom Community. But as a huge fan of your work, the mere idea of the update is very cool.

[TheBlueBalloon]

15 hours ago, Gregor said:

No, no. That's exactly what you can NOT do. :) You need a different umapinfo file for each wad. A umapinfo file is always specific to an individual pwad. Ancient Aliens needs a umapinfo file made for Ancient Aliens, containing only info about Ancient Aliens, while Eviternity or Valiant for instance would need there own individual umap file each.

 

For Ancient Aliens, umapinfo only really contains data to create the episode structure, which Doom 2 normally lacks, as well as changing the placement of the intermission screens. In vanilla Doom 2 the intermission screens always appear between maps 6-7, 11-12, 20-21 as well as 15-31 & 31-32. But in Ancient Aliens the intermission screens are supposed to appear between completely different maps. Umapinfo lets you change that as well as skip the intermission screen's default placements.

Got it.  Is there a place where I can find the umapinfo for each wad?  It doesn't seem to come with the wad itself.

[TheBlueBalloon]

1 hour ago, Mr Masker said:

You can find Umap's for other mods in the previously linked, "UMAPINFO Apreciation Thread".

 

For clarification, the UMAPINFO patch itself adds in the episodes and etc, it doesn't unlock compatability with episodes inside the Megawad.

 

For example, There's a Umap patch for adding episodes to Scythe 2, which doesn't normally have episodes. The Umap patch adds those in itself.

Ah just saw your post after replying to the other person.  Is that the repository for Umapinfos?  or is there another link to a umapinfo repository?

[TheBlueBalloon]

14 hours ago, Gregor said:

The Giorgio Tsouklas speech cannot be implemented through umapinfo, it requires ACS, which is not supported by PrBoom+ or DSDA. As skillsaw hinted at in his post above, this could perhaps be implemented through MBF21 and/or DEHEXTRA, both of which DSDA supports, but as of yet it hasn't been done.

Ah ok, so to hear the speech I would have to use gzdoom.  Is there a way to configure gzdoom to generally work like vanilla doom in that case?  I'm pretty sure there is, while still keeping the speech in the game.  

[Mr Masker]

14 minutes ago, TheBlueBalloon said:

Ah just saw your post after replying to the other person.  Is that the repository for Umapinfos?  or is there another link to a umapinfo repository?

I don't know of a UMAP repository as of yet, but that thread has a big pack of Umap patches. You can just put all those folders in the zip file into Autoload and they should work fine for their respective wads

[Gregor]

On 7/31/2022 at 4:48 PM, TheBlueBalloon said:

Ah ok, so to hear the speech I would have to use gzdoom.  Is there a way to configure gzdoom to generally work like vanilla doom in that case?  I'm pretty sure there is, while still keeping the speech in the game.  

Well, in the options you will find the compatibility menu (in the full options menu) that lets you apply various comp settings, either individually or using one of its presets. The presets Doom (strict), Boom (strict) and MBF (strict) correspond well enough to -complevel 2, 9 & 11, respectively. It's not flawless but close enough. Anyways, Ancient Aliens requires Boom, so the Boom (strict) preset is the way to go. Doom (strict) is for vanilla compatible wads, but keep in mind that it still won't be true vanilla; GZDoom just can't do that. You could use LZDoom instead, a fork of GZDoom, looks and works just like GZDoom but allows you to turn on vanilla RNG which makes Doom (strict) more accurate.

 

Apart from that you obviously turn off mouselook and jumping, disable texture filtering in the display options under texture options, scale the HUD to the correct size in the HUD options under Scaling and turn on "HUD preserve aspect ratio"... and switch off crosshair. There you go. Ah yes, and switch the midi player to "Microsoft GS Wavetable" under sound options to get the correct sound for the music. The OST for Ancient Aliens was made with that in mind and it's the same you get with PrBoom+ when you use the portmidi or SDL player in the menus...

Might have to turn off a few more things like Bloom in Postprocessing and so forth. Just dig through the options, most of the stuff is self-explanatory.

 

Btw, the speech works just fine, and in fact actually better, with Eternity. That one is also easier to set up (similar to PrBoom+) and more vanilla accurate. It's also the port that Ancient Aliens was more or less *made* for.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Gregor

[Gregor]

1 hour ago, TheBlueBalloon said:

Is that the repository for Umapinfos?  or is there another link to a umapinfo repository?

There is no real repository for umapinfo files. New wads will most likely include one inside the wad already. For "older" releases (really anything before 2018...) you have to either look one up in the Forum or make one yourself. That's where Slade comes in handy.

 

Note: Most Pwad/megaWAD don't need a umapinfo file anyways. Umapinfo is a relatively new invention. Older wads most of the time simply didn't implement features you would use umapinfo for nowadays unless they were made for ports like ZDoom or Eternity...

Edited July 31, 2022 by Gregor

[TheBlueBalloon]

4 hours ago, Gregor said:

Well, in the options you will find the compatibility menu (in the full options menu) that lets you apply various comp settings, either individually or using one of its presets. The presets Doom (strict), Boom (strict) and MBF (strict) correspond well enough to -complevel 2, 9 & 11, respectively. It's not flawless but close enough. So Boom (strict) will work just fine for Ancient Aliens. Doom (strict) for vanilla, but keep in mind that it still won't be true vanilla; GZDoom just can't do that. You could use LZDoom instead, a fork of GZDoom, looks and works just like GZDoom but allows you to turn on vanilla RNG which makes Doom (strict) more accurate.

 

Apart from that you obviously turn off mouselook and jumping, disable texture filtering in the display options under texture options, scale the HUD to the correct size in the HUD options under Scaling and turn on "HUD preserve aspect ratio"... and switch off crosshair. There you go. Ah yes, and switch the midi player to "Microsoft GS Wavetable" under sound options to get the correct sound for the music. Might have to turn off a few more things like Bloom in Postprocessing and so forth. Just dig through the options, most of the stuff is self-explanatory. That's the good thing about GZDoom/LZDoom, it's highly customizable.

 

Btw, the speech works just fine, and in fact actually better, with Eternity. That one is also easier to set up (similar to PrBoom+) and more vanilla accurate. It's also the port that Ancient Aliens was more or less *made* for.

Thanks for letting me know.  Yep, I've already turned off mouselook and jumping.  Thanks for letting me know about Eternity.  I've never heard of that before.

[TheBlueBalloon]

5 hours ago, Gregor said:

Well, in the options you will find the compatibility menu (in the full options menu) that lets you apply various comp settings, either individually or using one of its presets. The presets Doom (strict), Boom (strict) and MBF (strict) correspond well enough to -complevel 2, 9 & 11, respectively. It's not flawless but close enough. So Boom (strict) will work just fine for Ancient Aliens. Doom (strict) for vanilla, but keep in mind that it still won't be true vanilla; GZDoom just can't do that. You could use LZDoom instead, a fork of GZDoom, looks and works just like GZDoom but allows you to turn on vanilla RNG which makes Doom (strict) more accurate.

 

Apart from that you obviously turn off mouselook and jumping, disable texture filtering in the display options under texture options, scale the HUD to the correct size in the HUD options under Scaling and turn on "HUD preserve aspect ratio"... and switch off crosshair. There you go. Ah yes, and switch the midi player to "Microsoft GS Wavetable" under sound options to get the correct sound for the music. Might have to turn off a few more things like Bloom in Postprocessing and so forth. Just dig through the options, most of the stuff is self-explanatory. That's the good thing about GZDoom/LZDoom, it's highly customizable.

 

Btw, the speech works just fine, and in fact actually better, with Eternity. That one is also easier to set up (similar to PrBoom+) and more vanilla accurate. It's also the port that Ancient Aliens was more or less *made* for.

In regards to eternity,  there isn't a place in the folder to put my wad files, while for other sourceports, I could easily put my wad files into a specific location.

[Gregor]

5 minutes ago, TheBlueBalloon said:

In regards to eternity,  there isn't a place in the folder to put my wad files, while for other sourceports, I could easily put my wad files into a specific location.

What kind of specific folder location do you mean? GZDoom or Prboom+ don't have such a subfolder as far as i know... Anyways, you can always just create a folder yourself wherever you want to.

[TheBlueBalloon]

On 7/31/2022 at 3:58 PM, Gregor said:

What kind of specific folder location do you mean? GZDoom or Prboom+ don't have such a subfolder as far as i know... Anyways, you can always just create a folder yourself wherever you want to.

I guess what I'm referring to is for gzdoom and prboom+, they have a .exe file(gzdoom.exe, for example), whereas eternity does not.

[Mr. Alexander]

Here's what my D:\Games\Doom\source_ports\eternity directory looks like:

 

Spoiler

 

And here's what it finds when I ask only for .exe files:

 

Spoiler

 

Did you download the source-code release, or a Mac/Linux build, by mistake? What does your Doom file structure look like, and how do you typically launch PWADs from source ports?

 

[TheBlueBalloon]

On 8/2/2022 at 8:21 AM, Mr. Alexander said:

Here's what my D:\Games\Doom\source_ports\eternity directory looks like:

 

  Hide contents

 

And here's what it finds when I ask only for .exe files:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Did you download the source-code release, or a Mac/Linux build, by mistake? What does your Doom file structure look like, and how do you typically launch PWADs from source ports?

 

Sorry for just getting to this.  My doom file structure looks like the following: I have my C drive, then all doom games, then all( sourceport) doom games, then all (sourceport) Doom and doom 2 games.  In these doom and doom 2 games folders, I have the iwad and the pwads associated with it in the same folder.  It's at the same level as the (sourceport).exe file.