Map Balancer - new version with Dynamic Mode

[cybermind]

I made a simple DB plugin that allows you to observe the information about thing placement in classic Doom map formats. Something like WadWhat/WadSpy, but integrated in editor itself.

It is able to show monster numbers and percentages, ammo count, health/armor count, powerup count, total monster HP.

Also supports dynamic mode (detailed information below):

Spoiler

This mode allows you to observe thing stats in dynamics, via dump file analysis.
How to use it:
You will need my PrBoom+ build (check out all its other features too!)
First, you need to generate a dump file. You could play an the map you want to test out, or you can use a demo file for that. The only extra thing you should do is to add -dumpthings X option to command line (where X is the number of tics that will determine how much often the game will dump things in file). For example, "glboom-plus.exe -playdemo demo.lmp -dumpthings 70"
When you're done, you should find a "dumpthings(number).dmp" file in your PrBoom+ directory. Load it in my plugin and you will have access to dynamic mode.

This mode allows to to observe the player's path on map, showing its stats at any moment (hover your mouse over the line to get additional information). The path may be shown with color representing health, armor or ammo and it could be animated.
You could observe info stats for any moment of dump, or even watch them while animating the path (the most useful part of it is rewinding dump file to the end and watching how much extra stuff is left on map)

 

 

Download:

MapBalancer.zip

MapBalancerPlugin.zip (sources)

 

 

Edited September 10, 2017 by cybermind

[BigDickBzzrak]

Will it work with plain DB2 or is GZDB required?

(in any case, splendid job.)

[Kappes Buur]

Very nice indeed.

 

2 questions:

Is UDMF compatibility planned?

Could the feature be added where actors in highlighted sectors are shown instead of the whole map?

 

 

Edited August 30, 2017 by Kappes Buur
questions

[40oz]

lovely interface! I love wadwhat, so this is great, for me :)

 

quick question, could you also include the combined HP of all the monsters in misc info?

 

- use Prboom+ demos to watch the ammo/monster numbers in dynamics (graphs, charts etc)

 

What does this mean? Something that I thought would be really useful for me both as a player and mapper is use demos to generate a line graph with time spent on the map on the x axis and how much health the player had on the y axis. I dont know if you plan for that or if its even necessary as a DB plugin, but id still really appreciate it.

Edited September 1, 2017 by 40oz

[joepallai]

This is really nice!  Thank you for making it.

[cybermind]

On 30.08.2017 at 0:46 AM, bzzrak said:

Will it work with plain DB2 or is GZDB required?

Don't know, I have tested it only with GZDB.

On 30.08.2017 at 3:02 AM, Kappes Buur said:

Is UDMF compatibility planned?

No, I'm planning to implement some balancing features, that will be dependent on classic Doom thing stats. Still, if someone wants to make just a thing lister plugin, he is free to do that (sources are available)

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

New version, new features:

• Dynamic mode (experimental)
  This mode allows you to observe thing stats in dynamics, via dump file analysis.
  How to use it:
  You will need my PrBoom+ build (check out all its other features too!)
  First, you need to generate a dump file. You could play an the map you want to test out, or you can use a demo file for that. The only extra thing you should do is to add -dumpthings X option to command line (where X is the number of tics that will determine how much often the game will dump things in file). For example, "glboom-plus.exe -playdemo demo.lmp -dumpthings 70"
  When you're done, you should find a "dumpthings(number).dmp" file in your PrBoom+ directory. Load it in my plugin and you will have access to dynamic mode.
  
  This mode allows to to observe the player's path on map, showing its stats at any moment (hover your mouse over the line to get additional information). The path may be shown with color representing health, armor or ammo and it could be animated.
  You could observe info stats for any moment of dump, or even watch them while animating the path (the most useful part of it is rewinding dump file to the end and watching how much extra stuff is left on map)
  As example, here are player paths for @Veinen and @Memfis showing their performance on FDC #17 (color represents current health)
   
                             Veinen                                                                Memfis
   
• Total monster HP added.
• You could view stats for selected things only.
• Much faster info tabs updating.

Links are in 1st post.

Edited September 9, 2017 by cybermind

[printz]

Does it evaluate the infighting potential? If not, then it's kinda like Procrustes' bed, causing you to cut or expand maps just to satisfy a statistic, disregarding environment.

[cybermind]

Yes, it's possible to calculate the damage that monsters have done to other monsters. I will implement that in next version, where it will be possible to draw charts showing different aspects of dump.

And of course this is just a tool, and the tools should be used wisely (the mappers make the maps, not the tools).

Edited September 9, 2017 by cybermind

[damned]

Nice work!
Is there some feature to compare total health of monsters and total damage possible to deal according to available ammo? :)

[cybermind]

2 hours ago, damned said:

total damage possible

I don't know how to calculate this just by means of data available in Doom Builder, because there are so much factors that affect total damage possible (moster infighting, barrels, hit ratio and other stuff). WadWhat is very inaccurate when it's calculating total weapon damage.

Still, it's easy to do that in Dynamic Mode - you could even calculate this now by testing your map with my build of PrBoom+ with -dumpthings option enabled and then analyzing the info from the last tic of the dump (how much stuff is left on map)

Edited September 12, 2017 by cybermind

[40oz]

Waaaaaaaattt this is awesome. I love this thing

 

[Jimmy]

Bumped into this thread and was quite smitten with the idea behind this plugin, but it's unfortunate that it currently only exists for 32-bit installs of UDB. I alerted someone previously to this and they discovered the GitHub repo is missing the "main" file, meaning a 64-bit install can't be built from it.

 

@cybermind If you're still about these days, I think only you can help out here!

Edited November 22, 2023 by Jimmy

[boris]

It doesn't look like MapBalancer.cs is actually needed. At least the code can be compiled without it.