Disable Automap

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edward850
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by edward850 »

Dancso wrote:How about assigning the automap to said second monitor but to then disable it, paint a big black rectangle all over it?
Because that's how you get screen burn and is against at least 2 industry development standards that I know of. Also that is a colossal waste of a screen.
Besides, nobody liked it in OS X Lion, why lower your standards in a Doom source port? ;)
Gez
 
 
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Gez »

edward850 wrote:That was put in place for old 1994 maps that thought it could abuse that. Hiding the map no longer cuts mustard. ;)
It was specifically put in place for Legacy of Suffering, not any 1994 map. :P
printz wrote:I understand the automap makes sense in the modern world, but I suppose that if the mod were in the middle ages, our hero would open his wax tablet and start scratching a rough map of the area?
There are automaps in Heretic and Hexen. In case you'd argue it's just because they're using the Doom engine, there are also automaps in all TES games since Arena, and in the Ultima Underworld games. Seems like a lot of people have found no problems with automaps in medieval fantasy settings.
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edward850
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by edward850 »

One was also added in the Turok re-release. Nobody complained about their immersion there either. (Mostly they just bitched about the price.)

It's important to remember that we add automaps typically because some people cannot properly correlate spatial awareness in a virtual 3D space, and can only navigate properly via a map of some kind. While it's all fine and good to say that you can navigate Eternity perfectly fine and solved its switch hunts with your eyes closed, some people have a hard enough time navigating E1M7 as it is and would be hopelessly lost without the automap. And it's not a generational problem, I've seen this with people consistently through the late 90's.

It's a user option through and through, not just some gameplay feature or weird Doom lore. To some people it's actually a necessity.
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Graf Zahl »

I guess our whiners cannot think that far. They obviously never look at the problem from the outside.

Rest assured: As long as I have any say in it, ZDoom will neither add a feature to block the automap nor savegames.
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JPL
 
 
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by JPL »

Kinda odd to see people being so hardline about what's basically a creative, subjective game design choice! I agree that for nearly all mods and levels, you want to have the classic automap, but there are some experiences that may be more challenging and/or interesting without it - if you've played the Thief games you'll remember they sometimes give you an incomplete or vague hand-drawn map to make exploration more tricky - and in those cases the designer should be able to specify that they'd prefer the automap be unavailable without cheating - obviously the menu options that say "ignore this silly designer preference, it's my game and I can enjoy it how I want" are important to have, both for players and during map development.

It's a bit like the flashlight in (non-BFG) Doom 3 - they intentionally wanted you to have to choose between having more situational awareness and having a weapon out. You have every right to disagree with that decision, and cheat or mod your way around it, and the game/engine should always make that possible! But it's fundamentally a creative decision. Honestly I suspect most people making conventional Doom-like experiences (~95% or more of Doom's user and dev base, let's say) want the automap exactly as-is but that doesn't make the people who want to try weirder stuff "wrong".

If the folks making the engine feel strongly about it that's probably that then :]
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Nevander »

Graf Zahl wrote:Rest assured: As long as I have any say in it, ZDoom will neither add a feature to block the automap nor savegames.
Time to make a fork.
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by wildweasel »

edward850 wrote:One was also added in the Turok re-release. Nobody complained about their immersion there either.
Added what, an automap? That's been there since the N64 release. (It just didn't always work in the PC port due to bizarre hardware-related conflicts.)
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Graf Zahl »

Nevander wrote:
Graf Zahl wrote:Rest assured: As long as I have any say in it, ZDoom will neither add a feature to block the automap nor savegames.
Time to make a fork.
Rest assured that this won't help your project. So far nothing that came with a custom EXE had any kind of success. For the worst case scenario you have to take a look at Caverns of Darkness. It was utterly unusable until I added support for its newly added features to ZDoom.
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Caligari87
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Caligari87 »

If your game is so far removed from Doom/Hexen/etc that you feel the need to hide the automap (citing all the reasons mentioned above), then go full "standalone". Bundle a zip with the preferred version of G/ZDoom, a custom IWAD definition that points to your mod, template INI file without default keybinds (no automap, no console, etc), and a MENUDEF that only includes the keybinds you want the player to use. There's no need to even recompile the sourcecode.

But if you're making a Doom mod specifically, then the automap is an integral feature of Doom. Work with it or ignore it, but understand some players will want to use it.

8-)
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Gez »

JPL wrote:It's a bit like the flashlight in (non-BFG) Doom 3 - they intentionally wanted you to have to choose between having more situational awareness and having a weapon out.
And it annoyed so many people that there were duct-tape mods, and when they did the BFG Edition re-release they relented.

Same thing with automap.

You can still do creative stuff with the automap; look at Grove.
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Chl
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Chl »

There seems to some misunderstanding what disabling the automap would imply, especially for what I have in mind. I don't want to disable the map just for the sake of it, but for mixing up the gameplay. I want the map to be there just not available at all times. I mean right now I can just hide all lines and have the map be drawn by hudmessages instead to simulate the player picking up map pieces. The suggestion comes from just to be able to have a more elegant solution. Also, if people want to cheat that's ok too, since then the player no longer plays the level as intended anyway and that has nothing to do with me any more.

Same thing about disabling saves. It's not for preventing the player to save(even if that would open up for some interesting level designs), it's mostly for preventing the player to save when in a fail state. That's all really.
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Mikk- »

Graf Zahl wrote:
Nevander wrote:
Graf Zahl wrote:Rest assured: As long as I have any say in it, ZDoom will neither add a feature to block the automap nor savegames.
Time to make a fork.
Rest assured that this won't help your project. So far nothing that came with a custom EXE had any kind of success. For the worst case scenario you have to take a look at Caverns of Darkness. It was utterly unusable until I added support for its newly added features to ZDoom.
How can one gauge the "success" of a free mod for a 20+ year old game?
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edward850
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by edward850 »

Chl wrote:Same thing about disabling saves. It's not for preventing the player to save(even if that would open up for some interesting level designs), it's mostly for preventing the player to save when in a fail state. That's all really.
Then do it the way doom already provides. Kill the player.
The ability to control saved games is even less up for discussion, either way. For technical and development reasons they cannot be restricted at any time. You could not convince a single programmer here to do otherwise, as we actually need them for debugging specific conditions. No, "I don't think a bug could ever occur at this exact spot" is not a valid excuse, especially if you're not the person working on the engine.
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Chl
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by Chl »

edward850 wrote:Then do it the way doom already provides. Kill the player.
The ability to control saved games is even less up for discussion, either way. For technical and development reasons they cannot be restricted at any time. You could not convince a single programmer here to do otherwise, as we actually need them for debugging specific conditions. No, "I don't think a bug could ever occur at this exact spot" is not a valid excuse, especially if you're not the person working on the engine.
Wait, wait. The way you are talking it almost seems to me that you think saving should be removed? I mean, I'm using it for testing myself so that's not what I mean. As has been mentioned earlier, what's wrong with having a toggle for auto/quick save in MAPINFO and having a CVAR to be able to override it? Am I missing something here?
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edward850
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Re: Disable Automap

Post by edward850 »

There is no point sticking in such a function only to provide a cheat-less archival cvar that disables it. That's just being indirect.
No, we are not providing any reason for saved games to be obstructed. We'd rather have bug reports with save files then "sorry I couldn't save I didn't know how to override that". That's just being directly obstructive to the developers, and you want us to put it there in the first place.
Chl wrote:The way you are talking it almost seems to me that you think saving should be removed?
The exact opposite. Saved games must never be removed under any and all circumstances. The only time you can't save is when you're dead in a singleplayer game with respawning mode disabled. So if you don't want the player to save, kill them.
Incidentally this means that multiplayer actually has 0 restrictions on saving whenever you damn want. :P
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