Preferred map format to play/map in?

[TheCaneOfTheTophat]

UDMF, Boom, Vanilla, Doom-In-Hexen, which formats do you all like playing on? If you're a mapper, which one do you prefer mapping for? And why?

I find myself liking Boom in terms of mapping, Boom is very close to vanilla but has those extra features like fake ceilings and brightness transfers, and it's not overwhelming like UDMF. Doom-In-Hexen's nice too, it's UDMF but watered down and less packed.

When I'm playing, I like everything except UDMF. It's just... off. It doesn't feel like I'm playing Doom anymore. Either that, or the mapper's new and used UDMF because they were told it's the best one by somebody, but they actually don't utilize the features given to them, and I'd be playing on GZDoom for no good reason.

[MFG38]

From a playing perspective, anything goes.

 

From a mapping perspective, I used to be a (G)ZDoom guy - worked in all the major formats that it supports - but I've recently grown to favor Boom format (and, sort of by extension, MBF21). I find it's the perfect middle ground between the simplicity of vanilla and the complexity of UDMF without sacrificing compatibility with a lot of source ports like the latter does. The sheer amount of control that UDMF provides is both a benefit and a drawback - the latter in the way that it kinda comes at the cost of efficiency to me. With Boom, I don't have that problem.

[Somniac]

I really enjoy what Boom offers. I haven't done anything crazy with it but its the little things, lighting transfers, generalised linedefs, conveyer belts and everything you can do with them (giving switches multiple actions for example) that make it really satisfying. For me its like vanilla with a few little aesthetic and gameplay extensions to make things more interesting, and if you're really ambitious I feel like you can do just about anything with it, within reason. Something about being able to have physical scripting baked-in to the map is really satisfying. 

 

After that probably vanilla. I'm making vanilla maps at the moment, and working around the limitations is quite a fun (and occasionally frustrating) challenge. I find that I don't run into VPOs as much as I run into drawsegs overflows, and trying to find a compromise between what you want and what the engine allows is an interesting layer to add to the process. Not that one necessarily has to make vanilla maps that push those limits, a well-made simple vanilla map is still a good map, it depends what you're trying to do. Plus, something about making maps in 2023 that can run on the original executable is just cool as hell to me. I've found that mapping for vanilla is something I had to grow to appreciate, however. 

 

Limit-removing is another one that I like though I find it occupies a bit of a weird niche. Just vanilla actions and specials, no Boom features, but no limits to the geometry. That said, I feel like that's a good place to start for simplicity's sake, for someone new to mapping, or if you just don't want to be burdened by the static limits but don't want any other features.

[dasho]

Here for my usual pissing in the wind statement about the base UDMF spec being no more complicated than Boom, and that in fact it is essentially Boom without binary format map limits.

Edited March 4, 2023 by dasho

[SuyaSSS]

No need to write a paragraph, it's anything goes for me!

 

[TheCaneOfTheTophat]

3 hours ago, dasho said:

Here for my usual pissing in the wind statement about the base UDMF spec being no more complicated than Boom, and that in fact it is essentially Boom without binary format map limits.

Complexity (if I understood what you meant by it correctly) is irrelevant. You can teach a monkey on how to use every UDMF feature easily. In my case, I find it overwhelming, where the sheer quantity of options either confuses me or makes me be overambitious. There is no other format I've used where editing a sector gives me four tabs of options.

[dasho]

1 minute ago, TheCaneOfTheTophat said:

Complexity (if I understood what you meant by it correctly) is irrelevant. You can teach a monkey on how to use every UDMF feature easily. In my case, I find it overwhelming, where the sheer quantity of options either confuses me or makes me be overambitious. There is no other format I've used where editing a sector gives me four tabs of options.

You misunderstand; a proper editor config based on the vanilla spec wouldn't HAVE four tabs of options.

Edited March 4, 2023 by dasho

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

Obviously, it's more about what you do with the format you use than the format itself.

That said, I probably like Hexen format most when making maps, and I don't have a strong preference when playing. Room-over-room is the one thing I miss in my dooming experience. The simple idea of putting things on top of another things elevates the map a lot for me, personally. Not excessive verticality, just a little bit here and there. More like Duke than Quake, if that makes sense. And my editor can handle hexen format, unlike udmf, so that's nice.

[volleyvalley]

I thoroughly enjoy vanilla. It's the map format, that Doom first launched with. I don't know how to explain it, but I much more prefer a simpler map with an somewhat abstract layout with relaxed detailing rather than an hyperdetailed, monolithical slaughterfest with 10000+ monsters in it. Alien Vendetta is an prime example of that. The layouts are clean, well detailed and fun to play just like the original IWADS, but much more visually pleasing. While I don't have anything against any other mapping formats, I feel like some of the mappers go way overboard with just that.

[Bauul]

While I absolutely appreciate the artistic and technical merit in targeting older map formats and source ports (I'm tinkering on a MBF21 map in Doom format right now), I will never not miss the added flexibility UDMF offers.

 

It's the little things mostly, like the ability to rotate flats, that makes such a huge difference. Got a border running around the outside of a room? Just hit a single button per-linedef to rotate the one flat texture to follow the direction of the border, done in 30 seconds. In older map formats you'd need a custom flat for every angle the border takes, which is significantly more tedious. Or fractional vertex positions - you don't realize how much easier it is to make angled geometry until you use UDMF. Neither of these things are game-changes for the player, but are huge conveniences for the mapper.

 

It is true that UDMF (especially when combined with a powerful source port like GZDoom) can offer almost too much choice, and you have to consciously reel yourself in. But if you are able to do that, the workflow is just so much faster. I am genuinely lamenting having to faff around with voodoo doll conveyor belts rather than just hitting F10, simply typing what I want the map to do in a few seconds, and hitting save.

 

On 3/4/2023 at 4:23 AM, TheCaneOfTheTophat said:

When I'm playing, I like everything except UDMF. It's just... off. It doesn't feel like I'm playing Doom anymore.

 

I counter this to propose that you can't level this criticism at the map format itself. If I converted E1M1 to UDMF for example it would be literally indistinguishable from the Doom Format version.

 

I suspect you have in fact played many UDMF maps you never realized were that format because they weren't obviously using UDMF features, and potentially even played maps you thought were UDMF because of added source port features but were actually an older format.

 

Like many things, map format is just a tool. How a map ends up is entirely down to how the mapper chooses to use it.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Bauul

[Klear]

54 minutes ago, volleyvalley said:

I thoroughly enjoy vanilla. It's the map format, that Doom first launched with. I don't know how to explain it, but I much more prefer a simpler map with an somewhat abstract layout with relaxed detailing rather than an hyperdetailed, monolithical slaughterfest with 10000+ monsters in it. Alien Vendetta is an prime example of that. The layouts are clean, well detailed and fun to play just like the original IWADS, but much more visually pleasing. While I don't have anything against any other mapping formats, I feel like some of the mappers go way overboard with just that.

 

Same here. I remember first seeing dynamic light in a source port years ago and thinking how much better it made Doom look, but later on I realised it just makes the game feel a bit less like doom. Same logic applies to custom map.

 

This only applies to my preferences as a player, though. As it turns out when making a map myself, I can't resist putting excessive detail everywhere, playing around with dolls, figuring out boom tricks and all that. The map I'm working on right now feels like I'm aiming to do something more akin to the first Half-Life in Doom rather than Doom.

 

I have tons of respect towards mappers who are able to capture the feel of the iwads. I'm not close to being one. But that's fine.

[indigotyrian]

ultimately it comes down to whatever the designer wants or needs. You can do a lot of really cool stuff even with vanilla/limit removing (recent DBPs like Steamy Bathhouse and Augustland Barrens come to mind along with KDiKDiZD of course) but as mentioned before UDMF really offers "all of the above." The problem with UDMF however is that despite it being a Universal Doom Map Format in practice it just means "the GZDoom/Zandronum format", neither of which are ports I particularly enjoy using for a bunch of reasons that mostly come down to aesthetics and design choices.

 

I suppose then that my favorite would be MBF21 though if something compelling is released in UDMF then I can suffer GZDoom enough to play it. At the end of the day, the author's creation is what truly matters, not what spec they're using. Design is Law.

[Graf Zahl]

Maybe things will change a bit once DSDA's UDMF support is ready for prime time... ;)

 

 

Edited March 5, 2023 by Graf Zahl

[Astro X]

I prefer vanilla or limit-removing :)

[dasho]

18 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Maybe things will change a bit once DSDA's UDMF support is ready for prime time... ;)

 

 

 

Since they have no plans on implementing anything other than a ZDoom namespace (according to their Github), it sounds like business as usual.

[Graf Zahl]

So? They already got several important features in. Obviously this ultimately needs a separate namespace to have a clear baseline spec. Until then, yeah, like I said: it's not yet ready for prime time.

 

 

[dasho]

My point is that it is a wasted opportunity for a popular non-ZDoom engine to have a path for people used to mapping for Boom/MBF/etc using traditional Doom-style specials that are convinced using UDMF format is intimidating or involves a steep learning curve. With a proper UDB config, mapping for the base namespaces of the spec differs very little from the mapping that they would be accustomed to.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

According to the github, Dsda isn't even planned to have full hexen format support, which would be much simpler to implement than udmf.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Sneezy McGlassFace
correction

[Lobo]

18 minutes ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

According to the github, Dsda isn't even planned to have full hexen format support, which would be much simpler to implement than udmf.

You are very wrong. Doom UDMF is a hell of a lot less work than vanilla Hexen.

 

There is a lot of confusion in this thread about what UDMF is: the simplest explanation is that the map information is stored in a text format, instead of binary. A "Doom" UDMF configuration in a map editor would be basically the same as a DiD configuration: the mapper would notice no difference in general.

 

But most people have only ever seen "Zdoom" UDMF, which has a config with tons of options and parameters. Most other UDMF configs (i.e. k8vavoom, Eternity, Gzdoom) are based on "Zdoom", not "Doom".

Edited March 5, 2023 by Lobo

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

10 hours ago, Lobo said:

You are very wrong. Doom UDMF is a hell of a lot less work than vanilla Hexen.

That's very surprising to me, I stand corrected.

 

Right, I was unaware the map format and feature set are different things. It seemed to me the question was about, the set of features not how the features are stored. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Sneezy McGlassFace

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Bit of an odd choice but I quite like to map in MBF format. Sure its just BooM plus a few extra features but I like complevel 11! :3

[Kain D.]

As mapper Boom/MBF, because there is so many unused features.

 

9 minutes ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Sure its just BooM plus a few extra features but I like complevel 11! :3

It is much more, than that.

[Bauul]

I am definitely seeing some confusion here around what "map format" actually means.

 

There are three map formats that Doom source ports typically recognize: Doom format, Hexen format, and Universal Doom Mapping Format (UDMF).

 

Boom, MBF21 etc. are not map formats, they are source port features sets. 

 

Now in reality the actual levels people make are a combination of map format and source port features set. So (for example) an Eternity UDMF map would have different features available to it than an Eternity in Doom format map, which in turn would have different features than a Boom in Doom format map.

 

Ultimately a theoretical MBF21 in UDMF format (which is something DSDA is supposedly slowly working towards) would have the feature set of MBF21 but the added flexibility of UDMF, and I think would be a holy grail for a lot of mappers that target DSDA/PRBoom+ for their levels.

[Klear]

I would like to thank everyone in this thread for their input. I used to think I had a decent grasp on these things, but reading this helped me realise I understand nothing. But no worries. I'll piece it together with time.

[Edward850]

3 hours ago, Lobo said:

Most other UDMF configs (i.e. k8vavoom, Eternity, Gzdoom) are based on "Zdoom", not "Doom".

Eternity's UDMF is not based on ZDoom. They have incidental similarities but they aren't compatible in either direction, especially with portals.

[Fiber Wire]

Doom format because I want my maps to work on anything someone may run them on. 

[pcorf]

Vanilla, Limit Removing, Boom

[Murdoch]

I like good maps. Could not possibly care less as to the format.

[MTrop]

Format to play in does not matter. Once that data is read, it goes to the engine itself for simulation. I'd argue that even UDMF gets transformed into something else at the engine level.

 

For the preferred format to map in, I like the Vanilla format's simplicity, and it encompasses a lot of standards (Doom, Boom, MBF, MBF21).

 

UDMF's fine if I need to care about sub-mapunit geometry and whatnot, but you are more than likely locked to its target port if its namespace isn't read by another port.

[Professor Hastig]

I am a bit confused by several people declaring Hexen action types too complex. Is it really easier to memorize tens of different types instead of just having one that can be parameterized?

 

11 hours ago, dasho said:

My point is that it is a wasted opportunity for a popular non-ZDoom engine to have a path for people used to mapping for Boom/MBF/etc using traditional Doom-style specials that are convinced using UDMF format is intimidating or involves a steep learning curve. With a proper UDB config, mapping for the base namespaces of the spec differs very little from the mapping that they would be accustomed to.

 

All I have to say here is if you want to have more features you gotta learn. Base "Doom" UDMF doesn't really have much to offer aside from raised limits, the good stuff was all done for Hexen format actions. At least DSDA is branching out from what 'classic' Doom mapping had been stuck with for 20+ years.

 

 

5 hours ago, MTrop said:

UDMF's fine if I need to care about sub-mapunit geometry and whatnot, but you are more than likely locked to its target port if its namespace isn't read by another port.

 

Hopefully we eventually get an MBF23 namespace that serves all ports that currently can read UDMF.

DSDA has added quite a bit of features recently, the most important one flat texture scaling/rotation/offsetting.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, Murdoch said:

I like good maps. Could not possibly care less as to the format.

 

Indeed, that's the essence for me, too. Map format is absolutely secondary compared to what people create with it.