by HotWax » Fri Aug 17, 2007 1:03 pm
I can see Graf's (and other's) point that a port shouldn't have to worry about you trying to load an incompatible map made for another port, and if we were talking about (for example) ZDoom versus Doom Legacy, I'd agree one hundred percent. However, this is ZDoom versus GZDoom, which supports 100% of ZDoom's features and adds a new rendering mode and, what, a whopping 3 new features? Unlike the former scenario, or the ZDoom versus jDoom scenario given, this can easily happen to somebody grabbing a file off the ZDoom forums and making the (clearly idiotic) assumption that it should run in ZDoom. To make matters worse, the level will run in ZDoom, and depending on the usage of the 3D floors it may not be apparent that the level isn't showing up the way the author intended. In the case of Cutty's portal map, for example, I could still make it through most of the rooms without the platforms, merely by using the portals in unintended ways. It was only after Cutty informed me that I should have used GZDoom that I saw how what had been an empty room was now filled with floating platforms and went "Ooh so that's why this seemed too difficult before."
Finally, probably the best reason why this is a reasonable suggestion in this case is that the programmer of GZDoom is also a main programmer for ZDoom. I see no reason why there can't be a simple warning that says something to the effect of "This wad is attempting to use features only supported with GZDoom's opengl renderer and may not play as the author intended" displayed to the console when the map is entered.
I can see Graf's (and other's) point that a port shouldn't have to worry about you trying to load an incompatible map made for another port, and if we were talking about (for example) ZDoom versus Doom Legacy, I'd agree one hundred percent. However, this is ZDoom versus GZDoom, which supports 100% of ZDoom's features and adds a new rendering mode and, what, a whopping 3 new features? Unlike the former scenario, or the ZDoom versus jDoom scenario given, this can easily happen to somebody grabbing a file off the [b]ZDoom[/b] forums and making the (clearly idiotic) assumption that it should run in [b]ZDoom[/b]. To make matters worse, the level [b]will[/b] run in ZDoom, and depending on the usage of the 3D floors it may not be apparent that the level isn't showing up the way the author intended. In the case of Cutty's portal map, for example, I could still make it through most of the rooms without the platforms, merely by using the portals in unintended ways. It was only after Cutty informed me that I should have used GZDoom that I saw how what had been an empty room was now filled with floating platforms and went "Ooh so [b]that's[/b] why this seemed too difficult before."
Finally, probably the best reason why this is a reasonable suggestion in this case is that the programmer of GZDoom is also a main programmer for ZDoom. I see no reason why there can't be a simple warning that says something to the effect of "This wad is attempting to use features only supported with GZDoom's opengl renderer and may not play as the author intended" displayed to the console when the map is entered.