zWad

[madnessJack]

Visual basic is far overated, it is not visual or basic really. this is just my personal opinion. Javascript - now thats a language. There isnt much that get easier than that.

[TheDarkArchon]

Javascripts main failing is in the title.

[madnessJack]

how do you mean?

[TheDarkArchon]

"script". Scripts have simplicity in spades but lack proper power.

[madnessJack]

Ah, I see what you mean. Sureley java or a more shorthanded logical language like something based on c. I'm no expert or even amateur at these things but i find parenthesis far easier than basic style command languages. As I say though, just personal opinion.

[Bio Hazard]

I do have to say, C was difficult for me at the start. I had no idea how it worked so my code was terribly malformed. Then I took a class in Assembly language and all became clear.

Looking at some of my older .c files showed a dramatic difference between pre/post ASM class. I instantly understood pointers which makes a lot of things really easy.

[Graf Zahl]

do the entries of a map have to be in a certain order?

I've just removed this limitation from Doomsday actually so that I can implement other stuff.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to deviate from the standard order though.

Actually there are some old maps in the /idgames archives which intentionally screw up the names. But I would never bother supporting such nonsense.

[justin024]

What would the usefulness of changing the level lumps be?

Ah, I see what you mean. Sureley java or a more shorthanded logical language like something based on c. I'm no expert or even amateur at these things but i find parenthesis far easier than basic style command languages. As I say though, just personal opinion.

Visual Basic is a dead end for developers. It might appear easy to use at first but I haven't seen any other development system that has such a bad history of inter-version incompatibilities.

The syntax means nothing to me. I don't know enough about any other language yet to write this in something else (except C# which is more or less VB.NET with braces). If I did write something else like this it would probably be in Java so non-windows users could use it. I haven't had too many problems with version compatibility. VB6 progs always run for me. There was one time that I had to download a .dll or something for a VB4 prog.

Oh and btw: What is this xWAD supposed to be? Something like XWE?

It probably won't be that good I don't know a lot about programming graphics and sound. I could possibly get it to display PNG/JPEG/BMP lumps but I'm not sure about doom gfx. I have it displaying each wad entry as hex or byte ATM. At the bare minimum, it will at least have a Hex/Byte/Char viewer and an export raw lump feature.

Visual basic is far overated, it is not visual or basic really. this is just my personal opinion. Javascript - now thats a language. There isnt much that get easier than that.

Javascript isn't even a programming language though. It's just a way to make web pages have some minimal interactivity. And Javascript can't even do what ASP or PHP can do.

Javascripts main failing is in the title.

Definetly

[MartinHowe]

Why ":("?

Because DB has worked so well, does almost everything I want it to, and I have become very comfortable with it; therefore, I don't want to lose it. Unfortunately, it will have to die eventually because it is getting near to being unmaintainable. CodeImp said on the DB forums that he has no time to make it compile in modern VB versions, so I imagine a straight port to C is also out of the question. DB is a dead end. I'll just have to hope that SLADE gets a hell of a lot better than it is now; the author is apparently working on that, so I'll wait and see.

[DaniJ]

Actually there are some old maps in the /idgames archives which intentionally screw up the names. But I would never bother supporting such nonsense.

Why would they do so intentionally? Are there other ports that have removed this limitation (perhaps the author wanted to make sure the wad was played in port X?)?

There isnt much that get easier than that.

If you want an easy to learn language try PHP. However don't get too comfortable with the freedom it offers, as when you try to learn a "proper" language like C/C++ you'll end up having nightmares (I've got the t-shirt ).

[Bio Hazard]

If you want an easy to learn language try PHP. However don't get too comfortable with the freedom it offers, as when you try to learn a "proper" language like C/C++ you'll end up having nightmares (I've got the t-shirt ).

Fully seconded on all parts.

[randi]

Are there other ports that have removed this limitation...?

ZDoom lets you omit some of the lumps, but the order is still important. I can't imagine why someone would want to rearrange the lumps, unless what they really did was rename them so that the map might not be editable, while still being playable, since Doom doesn't check the lump names.

[DaniJ]

I can't imagine why someone would want to rearrange the lumps, unless what they really did was rename them so that the map might not be editable, while still being playable, since Doom doesn't check the lump names.

Ah I see.

Well, I need to check the names at present in order to allow a non-standard order.

I've been thinking if there might be a way to discern the type of a lump without checking the name, without assuming an offset to the map identifier lump (and without declaring the order/format someplace in the map data or with a definition) but so far I've not found any definitely unique data patterns I can check for.

I think I'll just forget about these couple of old maps for now.

ZDoom lets you omit some of the lumps, but the order is still important.

Which lumps does ZDoom not need? (In Doomsday 1.9.0 we don't require BLOCKMAP and REJECT).

Also, does ZDoom allow use of the map identifier lumps to hold any additional data (if so what is it and what are the technical details (ie if its binary what are the byte offsets, sizes etc))?

[Graf Zahl]

ZDoom lets you omit some of the lumps, but the order is still important.

Which lumps does ZDoom not need? (In Doomsday 1.9.0 we don't require BLOCKMAP and REJECT).

ZDoom recognizes maps without SEGS, SSECTORS and NODES lumps.
But this is not 100% stable because it tries to load the BLOCKMAP and REJECT lumps with their original offset. It's only meant for SLIGE maps. Any regular map should have the full set of lumps in proper order.

BLOCKMAP and REJECT can be empty but the lumps must be there, especiall with Hexen format because BEHAVIOR at its original index is used as the map format identifier.

All the BSP lumps can also be empty. In such a case the nodes are built internally.

Also, does ZDoom allow use of the map identifier lumps to hold any additional data (if so what is it and what are the technical details (ie if its binary what are the byte offsets, sizes etc))?

ZDoom first tries to read the map header as a BUILD format map and if that fails doesn't care about it any further. But GZDoom uses it for FraggleScript.

[Tormentor667]

SLADE doesn't work for me at all, without DB, life doesn't make any sense for me

You take this stuff way too seriously

Ever heard of sarcasm?