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> although it’ll probably have a hard time with modern WADs. Excuse my ignorance as it's been 20+ years since I did any DOOM development, but has the format of

> although it’ll probably have a hard time with modern WADs. Excuse my ignorance as it's been 20+ years since I did any DOOM development, but has the format of the WAD file changed over the years? I thought it was just binary assets joined together with a simple header that specified the file names & byte boundaries

lightedman 8y ago
Those of us running Zandronum use a mix of WAD and PK3 now days. Try Complex Doom Invasion.
michaelt 8y ago
If the game used to limit maps to 8MB and it’s since been changed to allow up to 8GB, new maps can be incompatible due to their size.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  There are also some hard limits on the amount of geometry and sprites in the map at one time. I used to use PRBoom which removes the limits while retaining compatibility with the original Doom
fb03 8y ago
I believe he meant the game engine itself: Those new levels were all designed using modern Doom engines, you can see even Romero is uzing gzdoom for screenshots etc. So they usually have a lot more corners and polygons than the doom maps devised at the time the game went out for the first time. It'd probably struggle to render in software. That's what I understood from it tho.
- mysterydip 8y ago
  From his "interview" under the announcement: Q: How did you create Sigil’s levels? A: I used the incredible Doom Builder 2 by Pascal vd Heiden (with support from several other authors). You can get it at http://doombuilder.com http://doombuilder.com
- jsd1982 8y ago
  It's not a hardware VS software thing since modern ports of software renderers for DOOM are not very demanding and can easily get upwards of 1000fps (yes, thousand). It's more to do with assumed memory constraints of the original DOOM.EXE on DOS for PCs which placed constraints on renderer related resources available which in turn limited level complexity. With modern ports, those constraints have been loosened quite a bit and more complex levels can be made.
depressedpanda 8y ago
I think it's more a matter of a 386 being old and slow, and modern WADs being developed for and tested on newer and faster systems.

lightedman 8y ago

Those of us running Zandronum use a mix of WAD and PK3 now days. Try Complex Doom Invasion.

michaelt 8y ago

If the game used to limit maps to 8MB and it’s since been changed to allow up to 8GB, new maps can be incompatible due to their size.

rangibaby 8y ago
There are also some hard limits on the amount of geometry and sprites in the map at one time. I used to use PRBoom which removes the limits while retaining compatibility with the original Doom

fb03 8y ago

I believe he meant the game engine itself: Those new levels were all designed using modern Doom engines, you can see even Romero is uzing gzdoom for screenshots etc. So they usually have a lot more corners and polygons than the doom maps devised at the time the game went out for the first time. It'd probably struggle to render in software. That's what I understood from it tho.

mysterydip 8y ago
From his "interview" under the announcement: Q: How did you create Sigil’s levels? A: I used the incredible Doom Builder 2 by Pascal vd Heiden (with support from several other authors). You can get it at http://doombuilder.com http://doombuilder.com
jsd1982 8y ago
It's not a hardware VS software thing since modern ports of software renderers for DOOM are not very demanding and can easily get upwards of 1000fps (yes, thousand). It's more to do with assumed memory constraints of the original DOOM.EXE on DOS for PCs which placed constraints on renderer related resources available which in turn limited level complexity. With modern ports, those constraints have been loosened quite a bit and more complex levels can be made.

depressedpanda 8y ago

I think it's more a matter of a 386 being old and slow, and modern WADs being developed for and tested on newer and faster systems.