old timey doom editing

[CBM]

I finally tracked down the dos editor I used in the 90s... EdMap



https://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/utils/editors.php

[Enjay]

I remember that one. I didn't use it much myself. I tended to use a mix of DoomEd (the Geoff Allan one, not Id's own editor), DEU, WinDEU and BSP to manually build the nodes, especially as DoomEd could take minutes to build nodes, and made even more broken ones than BSP made.

Happy days that I'm glad are over. Modern tools are just do much easier, more powerful, more stable and less likely to create errors in the maps.

[leileilol]

I had forgotten about Edmap, but yeah that interface brings me back :O

DCK2 was also similar in the blues/grays but that often had stability issues for me. Don't miss those.

I also used to use DoomEd but it had an annoying strict low linedef limit IIRC (because shareware). Was a handy resource viewer though

On the id tech2/3 side, they're just finally getting out of those ancient editor growing pains with Trenchbroom, but there's too many other certain factors still holding accessibility back...

[Dwim-pon]

Oh, always loved how old-school editors looked. As technology marches on, they're all impossible to use properly now, sure, but they're all so colorful and full of personality! Definitely more attractive than the more ergonomic but also very bland windows of modern editors.

[Enjay]

I also used to use DoomEd but it had an annoying strict low linedef limit IIRC (because shareware). Was a handy resource viewer though.

There were two DoomEds (perhaps both by the same author). One was a relatively simple editor, but didn't have map size limits, and the other was the shareware one. The SW one had more features, but it did have limits on the unregistered version. I think I did actually buy the full version at some point but I really don't remember.

I used to use the simpler one for most of my early mapping. I found it very good for laying down the basic architecture of the map. However, I didn't find other aspects of it as welcoming, so once I have the basic structure down, I tended to move to DEU to place items, set up line actions, do texturing and so on. I'd flip between the two (and more) during the editing process. Of course, doing so would mean jumping in and out of Windows 3.1 may times during production of a map. At least you could quit Win3.1 back to the DOS prompt.

Oh, always loved how old-school editors looked. As technology marches on, they're all impossible to use properly now, sure, but they're all so colorful and full of personality! Definitely more attractive than the more ergonomic but also very bland windows of modern editors.

That was a feature of many programs "back in the day". The fact that there was no common environment (i.e. Windows) meant that each software company had to invent their own wheel. So each program had its own look.

Whilst that does create some nostalgia within me, the convenience of having a more standardised approach (even though many organisation do try to put their own spin on it - bizarrely MS being one of the worst offenders), and not having to do other things like set up printer and graphics drivers for every different program I use far outweighs any upset I might feel at the loss of that individuality.

[CBM]

I remember that one. I didn't use it much myself. I tended to use a mix of DoomEd (the Geoff Allan one, not Id's own editor), DEU, WinDEU and BSP to manually build the nodes, especially as DoomEd could take minutes to build nodes, and made even more broken ones than BSP made.

Happy days that I'm glad are over. Modern tools are just do much easier, more powerful, more stable and less likely to create errors in the maps.

I jumped direcly from edmap that I used when I abandoned doom ediing in my youth to gzdoom builder that I use now that the itch has returned.. it was quite the upgrade

[Dancso]

I started out using Edmap, I had so much fun getting into mapping at an early age with it, even got kind of proficient at using it. Every day I'd get home from school and straight into Edmap (or the warcraft 2 level editor, hah!) Left Edmap for DoomBuilder around '05 though.
I remember trying to make a map so large it would fill up the bar underneath the menu options, never succeeded with that. Sadly I lost the one map I put the most time into due to a hard drive crash. Kinda feel like recreating it off memory at some point, even though it was pretty bad.
Also have a distinct memory at how easy it was to mess up levels by haphazardly deleting or overwriting parts of sectors, they would become segmented and cut in parts, but not in a good way. You had to either load a previous version or suffer through recreating multiple sectors every time, the worst part was realizing the mistake far too late. Sometimes even if you THOUGHT you fixed it, you'd later see the odd orphaned linedef later.

I'd spend hours trying to figure out a way to make monsters non-aggressive because there was a level with a boxing ring that did that. The effect would be lost if i tried to make any changes to it, to this day I'm wondering how that was done in vanilla.
Good times.

[Caligari87]

I'd spend hours trying to figure out a way to make monsters non-aggressive because there was a level with a boxing ring that did that. The effect would be lost if i tried to make any changes to it, to this day I'm wondering how that was done in vanilla.

My gut says it was probably a custom [wiki]REJECT[/wiki] table. They were used back in the day to speed up line of sight calculations, but can also be used to create "blind spots" for monsters (among other things). Most likely the table had an entry for that sector that automatically skipped any sight checks but was getting re-generated when you changed the level.

[Enjay]

Yup, that seems likely. I messed around with that a few times myself. Ultimately, I never really had a use for it, but it did work.

[leileilol]

Going back to Edmap, I think it's one of the earlier versions (1.12 - Sep '94) I originally tried since the MAKEWALL setup step gave flashbacks (later vers streamlined that).
I certainly do remember that pointless "3d" rendering mode it had.

Here's some shots of DCK and DoomEd