1994 tune-up challenge (*updated /idgames link*)

[esselfortium]

myk said:

No, it doesn't add hassle, and it encourages that we respect each other's work. As for the rest of your post, see below.

Yes it does, and I respect other peoples' intelligence by knowing that if pwads started requiring multiple iwads to run as a common practice, the three and a half people and their dog who didn't already own them would use Google to either download the iwad from some random website or get d1gfxd2.wad, so that they could then be subjected to the same extra layers of irritation as everyone who did pay for it. The system works!

[Capellan]

I've done some on my map (THENEST.WAD). I'm going to make a few changes:

- add a few small new areas to punch up the game play and create a little more 'complete' environment
- replace the empty 'courtyard' section of the level with an airlock room (which better ties into the look and feel of the rest of the level)
- remove the must-find-secret that is the only real gameplay no-no of the level (which also means removing one of the two keys on the level, and moving a door, but there's no need for more than one key on a level this size)

For the rest of it, I'll detail it up, but the look and feel won't change much (lots of CEMENT and GRAY textures), except that I'll emply Doom 2's extended 'natural' textures for the cave section. Gameplay will be kept pretty much on the current level, so I expect this will end up as an early level in the compiled wad.

I must say, given the creation date of the wad, I'm impressed with original work done on it.

[Super Jamie]

esselfortium said:

Yes it does

What is so hard about appending -file c:\doom\doom.wad to your command? Drag and drop is a less-than-optimal way to launch multiple PWADs (I wouldn't even use it to launch one PWAD) and I'm aware the Windows comamndline sucks so bad, which is the whole reason frontends exist.

ZDL does proper file ordering, and even lets you move things up and down the list before launch. I thought everyone used it? I know I have been forever, even to launch PrBoom and Eternity.

[Snarboo]

I honestly don't want people to overlook this project at release because of the hassle involved in playing it.

Since Freedoom's textures aren't similar enough, would anyone be willing to make a set of custom textures that are similar in style to Doom's without actually being from Doom? I doubt anyone would care if the textures looked like Doom's but weren't, and they could even have the same name. The number of patches to replace is pretty small anyway.

That should please people on both sides.

Edit: If no suitable alternative is found, I'm probably going to stick with Doom textures.

[esselfortium]

Super Jamie said:

What is so hard about appending -file c:\doom\doom.wad to your command? Drag and drop is a less-than-optimal way to launch multiple PWADs (I wouldn't even use it to launch one PWAD) and I'm aware the Windows comamndline sucks so bad, which is the whole reason frontends exist.

ZDL does proper file ordering, and even lets you move things up and down the list before launch. I thought everyone used it? I know I have been forever, even to launch PrBoom and Eternity.

Cool, let me just open up this launcher, get to this Open File dialog box, type in these commands to go with it....good thing I'm not using that less-than-optimal drag and drop method or else I would have been already playing the damn wad several minutes ago!

Because dragging and dropping a wad onto a sourceport takes two seconds, and using a commandline or opening a launcher to do the same thing takes more than two seconds and requires me to actually exert effort. Doing so with multiple wads adds more time and effort to that, regardless of the method you're using to launch your sourceport.

[myk]

esselfortium said:
Yes it does, and I respect other peoples' intelligence by knowing that if pwads started requiring multiple iwads to run as a common practice, the three and a half people and their dog who didn't already own them would use Google to either download the iwad from some random website or get d1gfxd2.wad, so that they could then be subjected to the same extra layers of irritation as everyone who did pay for it. The system works!

PWADs already require an IWAD to run them, giving people enough reason to warez the DOOM games all they want in the first place. Anyway, it's good to know you're starting to agree, given the increasing silliness of your replies.

Drag and dropping two IWADs won't be a problem. Not any more than adding the rip WAD in the same way. If it is somehow, in any engine, in any way, there's likely a solution for that engine, such as making it exceptionally pop up the mini-launcher when it detects that more than one WAD being dragged to it is an IWAD. Coders are always willing to improve their engines, especially when what they need to do so is trivial. And we're arguing hypotheticals here; we didn't go over any actual problems in adding IWADs as PWADs this way. You just took "a considerable hassle" for granted like Gokuma may take a national ID as immediate slavery to the eternal Fuhrer.

[pavera]

Well I mean I've had to drag multiple files onto zdoom.exe to play other wads, so I don't really mind doing the same to play this one. I mean at most it would take me two more seconds to highlight more than one file. Quite honestly, this is the first community project I've ever been involved in so I'll probably be excited enough to do whatever it takes to play it once it's finished.

[esselfortium]

myk said:

PWADs already require an IWAD to run them, giving people enough reason to warez the DOOM games all they want in the first place.

Exactly, and that is why there is no benefit to what you're doing.

Anyway, it's good to know you're starting to agree, given the increasing silliness of your replies.

I don't think so Tim.

Drag and dropping two IWADs won't be a problem. Not any more than adding the rip WAD in the same way. If it is somehow, in any engine, in any way, there's likely a solution for that engine, such as making it exceptionally pop up the mini-launcher when it detects that more than one WAD being dragged to it is an IWAD. And we're arguing hypotheticals here; we didn't go over any actual problems in adding IWADs as PWADs this way. You just took it for granted like Gokuma may take a national ID as immediate slavery to the eternal Fuhrer.

.....

You do realize it's pretty easy and very common to include all of your custom textures inside your map wad, right? And that this makes all the difference between dragging one single wad easily onto your sourceport in 2 seconds, and having to either use a commandline or a launcher to load three wads together in the right order, which you don't have to do for any other modern Doom wad? (Emphasis on "in the right order" -- ZDoom lets you pick the iwad from a dialog, other ports will more than likely go with the first loaded one). I'm not taking anything for granted, I'm just very much convinced that this is a bad idea. It's not a huge deal, but the completely nonexistent benefit of your idea makes the extra work needed to play the wad completely pointless.

[Snarboo]

I found a few more bugs with my map, so here is a newer version. Hopefully this is the last time I have to reupload this. :p

[myk]

esselfortium said:
Exactly, and that is why there is no benefit to what you're doing.

To spell it out: It encourages people, and gives them a possibility (which is more or less missing otherwise) to respect copyrights while using the resources from the two games. The ripped WAD serves no purpose other than the ripping, and does nothing but encourage people to use ripped materials. That there is warez on some sites or places is not something either idgames or Doomworld are responsible for, should take into consideration to determine what files to offer, or should join just because it happens.

Now you're essentially trying to argue that doing something morally beneficial is pointless because you've seen various people doing otherwise. Congratulations!

[esselfortium]

No I'm not, thanks for completely misinterpreting what I said! I'm arguing that it's not morally beneficial because we all own the iwads anyway, so the distinction between them becomes completely arbitrary and only serves to fuel annoying forum arguments that no one can ever win, and make wads less convenient to either make or load for no actual purpose.

[Snarboo]

myk said:

Now you're essentially trying to argue that doing something morally beneficial is pointless because you've seen various people doing otherwise. Congratulations!

I wouldn't go that far. It's more of a legal grey area. Given the sheer number of maps that use ripped textures, I don't see the issue here if a few from Doom are used in Doom 2.

[myk]

I'm not just guessing. It's been explicitly prohibited in the EULA and confirmed by Todd Hollenshead that to use resources from an id game, they must be used in the game in question. Sure, no one will likely get sued or the like, but neither will you likely be able to sue me if I use a WAD you didn't give me permission to use as a base and tell you to fuck off. That's why it's more of a matter of mutual community respect than whether someone will get punished. I don't see why we shouldn't take id's copyrights and permissions into consideration just like we take each other's, and don't think it's really a good basis to start shadily in regard to the very base of what made the community spring forth.

Subject to the terms and provisions of this Agreement and so long as you fully comply at all times with this Agreement, ID grants to you the non-exclusive and limited right to create for the Software (except any Software code) your own modifications (the "New Creations") which shall operate only with the Software (but not any demo, test or other version of the Software). [...] You may include within the New Creations certain textures and other images (the "ID Images") from the Software.

[Snarboo]

Again, if I can find a suitable set of custom textures that approximate the textures taken from Doom, using the same patch names and dimensions, I will gladly replace them. I don't want to use textures from Freedoom because they are not as thematically similar and the BSD license might not be compatible with this project. It's not an issue for me to load Doom as a pwad, but I have to consider the other participants and end users opinions on this one.

I'm honestly going to go with the easiest solution here, even if it is the least moral.

[myk]

Replacing the textures doesn't make much sense to me, just use the IWAD. As for many using ripped stuff; often it's just a few textures hare and there, not the whole bunch as in this case, and would you litter the street just because you saw trash on it?

Snarboo said:
It's not an issue for me to load Doom as a pwad, but I have to consider the other participants and end users opinions on this one.

Whose? The only opinion I saw was esselfortium's, and he pulled the "issue" out of his butt, because using the IWAD or the ripped PWAD is about the same to the user. Maybe easier to use the IWAD, considering it means one file less to get for most of us.

I'm honestly going to go with the easiest solution here, even if it is the least moral.

Right, I'll be talking to Ty to get the rip WAD replaced, which would leave you only one choice unless you want to host the rip WAD outside idagmes.

[Snarboo]

myk said:

Replacing the textures doesn't make much sense to me, just use the IWAD. As for many using ripped stuff; often it's just a few textures hare and there, not the whole bunch as in this case, and would you litter the street just because you saw trash on it?

I would rather not have to deal with instructing users to load the iwad as a pwad and get complaints from people who couldn't be bothered to read the txt file when the wad doesn't work. That's not really my fault, but I want this to be a smooth process for everybody, lazy or not. If that means using look alikes instead of rips, so be it.

Also, we're not using all of Doom's textures, just those unique to Doom. It's only about 10 or 20 textures out of a hundred, so I don't see the issue here. Most of the textures are shared between Doom and Doom 2 anyway.

Whose?

Only you and essel have really shown any strong opinions about this, but I have a feeling most users would not be bothered by a project using ripped resources, especially when playing it will be easier for them. Very few people have complained about the hundreds of wads in the past that have used ripped resources. In fact, Ty has allowed entire packs of textures ripped from other commercial games to be uploaded to /idgames within the last year, so I don't see him removing a few Doom textures.

Right, I'll be talking to Ty to get the rip WAD replaced, which would leave you only one choice unless you want to host the rip WAD outside idagmes.

Or I can create my own wad and supply the team with the textures as necessary via PM.

I have taken the responsibility of this project on myself, and if I choose to use some of Doom's textures, than I will. I am willing to make a concession by changing the original's with look alikes, but otherwise I think it's best to let the issue go.

[maggot202]

Hello team
My progress has been slow, but that's because this week i had a lot of things to do for my university (final exams and such), but tomorrow i'll pick up my work again (tomorrow i have an exam at 14:00, and the next exam after that is on monday 19th). Anyway, today i did a little work on my melange project, and wanted to show you what 've done:

SHOT #3:
Before
After

Originally, this was a meaningless area of the map. Pushing the switch did nothing for you but waste your ammo. I can see the logic behind this (making the player say "son of a bitch, why the hell did you made me waste so many shells!?"), but i'm not a big fan of this, so i'm changing that

[myk]

Snarboo said:
Or I can create my own wad and supply the team with the textures as necessary via PM.

I was expecting you to use the existing external WAD during play, not to directly dump its contents into the levels WAD, which I assumed would contain only new stuff. In any case, the exaggeration of the "hassle" of loading the IWAD is plain ridiculous, like you'll be flooded with "it doesn't work" emails or something, and just shows the lack of consideration I was talking about above. As if playing any of the existing WADs that contain more than one PWAD (like various popular classics) were such a hassle. Especially considering that drag and drop or a launcher makes it all so trivial nowadays. If you wanted to edit DOOM addons for DOOM II, you should at least have taken the measures to do it properly, even if that meant a slight "complication" (which no one would seriously be concerned about once it's done that way).

I don't see him removing a few Doom textures.

We'll see. He certainly had no problem working with Sparky to "legalize" various PWADs that contained unnecessary IWAD content. It's one thing to arbitrarily remove an illegal WAD and leave no replacement, another to exchange it for an equivalent legal file.

[Snarboo]

myk said:

Especially considering that drag and drop or a launcher makes it all so trivial nowadays. If you wanted to edit DOOM addons for DOOM II, you should at least have taken the measures to do it properly, even if that meant a slight "complication" (which no one would seriously be concerned about once it's done that way).

Again, I've taken the responsibility of the project on myself. I think it should be easy as pie to load the wad in whichever port you choose, and that generally means reducing the number of files that the end user needs to load. It's simpler and cleaner for everybody in the end.

We'll see. He certainly had no problem working with Sparky to "legalize" various PWADs that contained unnecessary IWAD content. It's one thing to arbitrarily remove an illegal WAD and leave no replacement, another to exchange it for an equivalent legal file.

If that's the case, then I'll do this legally with lookalikes, which you also seem adverse to for some reason. Does it really matter if the textures are from Doom themself or if they simply look enough like them? And why does the method matter so much when the end result is the same?

I'm not holding anyone at gun point here, if they don't like the project or change their mind for any reason and choose not to participate, that's fine. If I receive enough concerns about the texture set from the participants, I will do my best to meet their demands. I'm not trying to be unreasonable here. I want this to be a good, fun community wad.

[Super Jamie]

maggot202 said:

After

For such a simple area, this is quite impressive. It reminds me of the Classic Doom mod for Doom 3. I can't wait to play the rest of your map :)

[Kyka]

maggot202 said:

Hello team

SHOT #3:
Before
After

The 'before' area looks much better...







Heh. Kidding. The updated screenie looks awesome.

[Snarboo]

maggot202 said:

SHOT #3:
Before
After

I love the lighting in the after shot. It's very moody. You've also hit a good balance between detail and influence, IMHO. :)

[Super Jamie]

Snarboo said:

Does it really matter if the textures are from Doom themself or if they simply look enough like them?

I imagine the Freedoom textures are fairly accurate dropin replacements anyway. Some of them are so good I can't even tell them apart from the IWAD textures, though this varies from artist to artist. Addmittedly some of them do look pretty crap due to lighting differences, much like the JDTP does.

However FD is distributed under a very open modified BSD license, which basically says "do what you want, distribute the license notice, no warranty" so you could even modify the textures which don't suit so well and end up with a good product.

[Snarboo]

The number of patches to replace is rather small, and making similar lookalikes shouldn't be much of a problem. I'll look into working on a good replacement pack. For the time being, you guys should still use the Doom textures until the texture pack is done.

Is this a reasonable solution?

Edit:
I've replaced a few of the more "isolated" textures from Doom with Freedoom equivalents. I did not replace textures that are similar to ones that exist in Doom 2 so they would mesh better with their Doom 2 counterparts. This texture pack should be more legal as a result. I'll bundle Freedoom's BSD license with the completed wad.

Now, do you guys think that is good enough?

[Solarn]

tatsurd-cacocaco said:

STONE3 textures look rusty, so it might match the castle style map better. However, I selected STONE2 textures in the castle. I'll mainly use STONE3 on exterior walls. It's because they are rusted easily.

Makes sense.

Csonicgo said:

Why stop there? Just nuke the whole archives while you're at it. Purge the unclean!

Chill man, you're using hyperbole.

esselfortium said:

Cool, let me just open up this launcher, get to this Open File dialog box, type in these commands to go with it....good thing I'm not using that less-than-optimal drag and drop method or else I would have been already playing the damn wad several minutes ago!

Because dragging and dropping a wad onto a sourceport takes two seconds, and using a commandline or opening a launcher to do the same thing takes more than two seconds and requires me to actually exert effort. Doing so with multiple wads adds more time and effort to that, regardless of the method you're using to launch your sourceport.

Dude, and I thought I was lazy.

Snarboo said:

Only you and essel have really shown any strong opinions about this, but I have a feeling most users would not be bothered by a project using ripped resources, especially when playing it will be easier for them. Very few people have complained about the hundreds of wads in the past that have used ripped resources. In fact, Ty has allowed entire packs of textures ripped from other commercial games to be uploaded to /idgames within the last year, so I don't see him removing a few Doom textures.

To butt in, I think you're all blowing this thing way out of proportion. I load any WADS I play from the Windows command line console anyway because I sometimes use extra parameters and it does NOT take that much longer than dragging and dropping the files in question, especially if you're used to it. So even if dragging and dropping two IWADs would cause problems (which I have no idea about) the alternative is not all that much of a hassle and the way I see it, there is really no reason to start some kind of holy war over one ripped texture pack when you could just use myk's solution with minimal extra effort.

As for those users who would actually have a problem with spending a few extra seconds loading another IWAD, well, who cares about stupid people?

[Solarn]

Super Jamie said:

I imagine the Freedoom textures are fairly accurate dropin replacements anyway. Some of them are so good I can't even tell them apart from the IWAD textures, though this varies from artist to artist. Addmittedly some of them do look pretty crap due to lighting differences, much like the JDTP does.

However FD is distributed under a very open modified BSD license, which basically says "do what you want, distribute the license notice, no warranty" so you could even modify the textures which don't suit so well and end up with a good product.

And some of them just look crap on account of being crap, like STONGARG.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Snarboo said:

Edit:
I've replaced a few of the more "isolated" textures from Doom with Freedoom equivalents. I did not replace textures that are similar to ones that exist in Doom 2 so they would mesh better with their Doom 2 counterparts. This texture pack should be more legal as a result. I'll bundle Freedoom's BSD license with the completed wad.

Now, do you guys think that is good enough?

Not until I see them. If you plan on using those textures in the final release then you should release them now, so we can make sure our maps still look correct with them. I've only used a couple Doom textures in my map, but I'd hate for them to stand out because they look entirely wrong where they used to blend in seamlessly.

On a side note, as I found out when I forgot to use the texture pack, Eternity will replace any missing textures with similar ones from Doom 2. I still don't feel like arguing about this, but I will say I like the idea of just using the Doom iwad for the textures. We all own the game anyway, I'd imagine the vast majority here use either command line or a launcher (the casual/lazier players you seem to be worried about are more likely the use a launcher, especially if it comes bundled with the port like Doomsday).

[NiGHTMARE]

I'm willing to have a go at recreating the missing Doom 1 textures if you like. After all, I've already recreated a significant number of the Doom 2 textures not present in Doom 1:).

[Gez]

While we're arguing about a few Doom textures that are missing in Doom 2, what about those wads that use Heretic or Hexen resources? I think we should get Herian and Mordeth nuked from the archives.

Unless they're made to be loaded with hexen.wad as a pwad. Then you can play it legitimately, even if it's with a completely screwed up palette that makes everything look awful.

[Solarn]

Gez said:

While we're arguing about a few Doom textures that are missing in Doom 2, what about those wads that use Heretic or Hexen resources? I think we should get Herian and Mordeth nuked from the archives.

Unless they're made to be loaded with hexen.wad as a pwad. Then you can play it legitimately, even if it's with a completely screwed up palette that makes everything look awful.

That's an entirely different argument that has nothing to do with the current one. Also, you're not helping.