Hi everyone.

With AC24 doing boom today, I'm faced with a reminder of the fact that, despite Doom modding being relatively approachable, there are still some things that make it hard for people with absolutely zero experience/setup to jump in.

Ideally we could come up with solutions to these issues and put them in the lyceum - I feel like since most people here are not mappists that it makes sense to make the lyceum page for Doom & Boom beefier. A while ago I tried my best to make the lyceum pages more helpful but I know they're not perfect. (I may have infodumped a little bit.) An "I'm new to Doom/Boom" page, or links to succinct, noob-proof external resources, could be a solution as well. (Xaser suggested wrapping up some core programs in a "starter kit" which could be good too.)

I want it to be possible for someone to go from zero to submitting a working map within an OHB's timeframe. I think this more or less implies a more thorough overview of things because there are a lot of rookie mistakes that can make the map unplayable, and there's not always someone knowledgeable in the chat!

I've come up with a list of things that I saw today, but I'd like to hear from all of you as well.

* Configuring UDB and SLADE to recognize your IWADs and source ports (UDB "game configurations"/ SLADE "base resource archive"). Dragging stuff into the .exe is not great so people shouldn't have to do that
* Related: picking the right format in UDB
* Getting stuck in UDB visual mode (I just remembered the default in visual mode is ESDF for movement, cringe)
* Accidentally overwriting DoomII's PNAMES/TEXTURE1 thereby causing a signal 11 error on map load
* You can make changes in SLADE and they will live-update in UDB if you hit "reload resources"
* Converting textures to the right format (covered partially in lyceum, could be clearer)
* don't test in zdoom
* What the line actions mean (W1/WR/G1/etc.). Actually just explaining sectors/sector effects and linedefs/line actions, as well as tagging, would be good too.
* people wishing they could do UDMF scripting, like having monster death open doors. This is not a thing outside of very specific cases. In some instances you can fake it with line triggers
* Custom music... I think the format should explicitly ban using someone else's midi if it doesn't already
* Node builders. You shouldn't have to think about these.
* Lumps. How do they work?

* people wishing they could do UDMF scripting, like having monster death open doors. This is not a thing outside of very specific cases. In some instances you can fake it with line triggers

I didn't even think more than a couple seconds about trying to figure out how to do this and then was like, "nah most of the time you can speed run doom levels anyway."

Figured I'd chip in here -

If you'd like, I'd be willing to create some sort of tutorial we could link on the Lyceum.

need dehacked tips n tricks

This is a tiny thing, but it took me forever to figure out how to *deselect* things in 3D mode (I finally found the shortcut for deselect all is 'c')

Some more stuff from later in the day yesterday, and things that are broken in people's submissions:

* Don't test in ZDoom!!!! It will not ignore errors that will crash other ports!
* Complevels. If it's not 9, it's not Boom, and if it's not 2, it's not Doom format
* Textures can have any power-of-two size and look fine in boom; doom format is more strict on height
*Monsters placed in too small areas so they get stuck
*Freedoom has textures (the "AQ" set and maybe some other ones?) that aren't in Doom. It also includes all Doom 1 and 2 textures in both freedoom1 and freedoom2.wad. I'm fine if these are allowed but it should be written down somewhere that using those textures will make the mapset not look right if you use the official Doom version
*run button exists



Despite all this, I think yesterday was a success. I'm glad so many people dipped their toes into Doom for the first time. And I'm sorry if I come across as nitpicky. I just want people to be able to map at a level that matches their ambition!



I'm still not really sure what to do with all this info. @retrokid104 a tutorial could be good but a lot of these things come down to problem-solving when something goes wrong, which isn't something you can 'tutorialize' per se.

yeah, fair point. i’m still somewhat confused by doom editing myself lol!

On the topic of map issues and compatibility, SLADE has a Map Checks feature that looks for potential issues. In particular, I found that having invalid lines (or "line N has no sides") actually causes a Segmentation Violation crash in the original DOS BOOM (for those like me who are a real stickler about compatibility/authenticity) but does not cause any issues in PrBoom+/DSDA-Doom, even with -complevel 9.