User talk:Ryan W

Hey! Welcome to the Doom Wiki. Good work on all those cleanups, keep up the good work! Make sure you read the style guide if you haven't already. Fraggle 08:49, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

disambig. pages
Last we discussed, you were asking about automated tools. Any luck? Or are you doing them by hand? -- Jdowland 14:33, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I did do them one at a time, although I avoided retyping all the level names by cutting and pasting back and forth from an OpenOffice spreadsheet. It actually didn't take very long.


 * Now we just have to wait for somebody to add a new list of levels for a megawad, and see if they remember to update the disambiguation pages. :D Ryan W 23:52, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * would it not be better to have e.g. E3M8 as the disambiguation page, with a template inserting something like for other maps occupying the E3M8 slot, see E3M8, rather than hand-writing a paragraph to the same effect on every map article? -- Jdowland 08:46, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually I've just tried this. See E1M8 and Template:map. I'm now not convinced if this is the best approach, perhaps a category for each map slot? I certainly don't like the idea of manually assembling lists of articles for each slot. -- Jdowland 08:53, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I don't see how this is any improvement over the way I did the MAP## pages. (I would have done the E#M# pages the same way, if any large PWADs from that era had complete articles yet.)  It still involves hand-compiling a list of the level names.
 * A category for each map slot would be even more unwieldy, since each level's entry would need to be edited in addition to updating the disambiguation lists.   Ryan W 06:07, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of a category for each slot. The category page would become in effect an automatic disambig page; there would be no disambig lists to manually update.  (The MAP07 page could be a #redirect to Category:MAP07.)  The only problem is that the game/megawad name needs to appear on the category page in addition to the level name.  This could be solved by renaming all the level articles to include the game/megawad name, such as for example "MAP07 (Doom II): Dead Simple", "MAP07 (TNT: Evilution): Prison", etc. radius 13:08, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying:
 * [a] 132 68 new categories with names like "E2M3" and "MAP25" would be created.
 * [b] Articles about individual maps, such as E2M3: Refinery and MAP25: Desecration (respectively), would be in those categories.
 * [c] The current E2M3 and MAP25 pages would be replaced by redirects to Category:E2M3 and Category:MAP25 and so forth.
 * [d] Articles about individual maps would have their names lengthened to include the name of the game/megawad.
 * I think the first three items together are a better solution than what Jdowland suggests above (as exemplified by both of our attempts, disambiguation pages tend to be clumsy things). I'm not sure about the fourth part because I've learned to be suspicious of extremely long URLs, but if you really think people are going to be typing "E2M3" by hand rather than clicking on "Doom" or "Heretic" from the main page, then I'll go along with that too.   Ryan W 01:02, 26 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * I've started to construct this system. I apologize in advance for some links being broken whenever the changes have been applied to only part of a given episode &mdash; everything should end up okay in the end.   Ryan W 20:52, 2 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * The way you're doing this at the moment, the pages like E1M1 are simple pages with one line giving a link to the corresponding category. Wouldn't it be better to make it a redirect? Or is there some reason for doing it this way? 84.92.173.189 00:35, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * Automatic redirects to categories do not work.   Ryan W 00:38, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * Wow, lots of editing! But I think the plan worked out well. Credit to User:Jdowland for coming up with the category-per-slot idea. Too bad the hard redirects to a category are not yet implemented; maybe someday soon the wiki folks will get around to it. radius 05:43, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * There's one other bug I thought of, which is that existing links could be broken by a map which had the same name as its counterpart in an IWAD (or, more likely, in an established and well-done megawad that we already had large and immobile articles about). Hopefully that won't happen; level designers have many qualities, but consensus usually isn't one of them.  :D     Ryan W 06:11, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * Well done with this, by the way. I like the way the level articles are a lot more consistent now, and the way it's been implemented (with the template that gives the header at the start and sets the category) is really elegant. Fraggle 09:19, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * It needs to be said that after Jdowland had written the template and radius had sort of distilled this conversation, there was absolutely no creativity involved. :>   But let's hope it keeps working &mdash; I see some new Scythe 2 pages already using it.    Ryan W 19:43, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * Yup, I included it in the WAD skeleton template. Ducon 19:57, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Stats for IWADs
I think the "Appearance statistics" version is better, because it 1) explains what kind of stat it is, and 2) doesn't have a link in the middle of the title. Fredrik 14:09, 2 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm starting to think that too, now that I see how that revision actually looks.  :7    Ryan W 14:14, 2 Oct 2005 (UTC)

about E1M1
for organizational purposes, i think it should be, but maybe the E1M1 page (and other disambig level pages) could be edited to add a quick link to the original E1M1? --Insertwackynamehere 01:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Category VFD
You didn't need to tag the categories of the analogies for deletion because they didn't actually exist in the first place -- TheDarkArchon 21:19, 21 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Hm. Special:Categories said they did.  Maybe I was looking at an out-of-date version.  Well anyway, thank you for deleting them.    Ryan W 21:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Template:Code
Wow, I don't even remember :P You can probably delete it.. I think I was trying to make a template for posting long blocks of code.. but I apparently sucked at Wikis back then heh. I doubt anything uses it --User:Insertwackynamehere/Signature 22:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Special:Wantedpages
Most of the expensive special pages had to be disabled from live mode (that is, updated on each edit), due to server slowodowns associated with a recent upgrade. These include things like Wantedpages, Shortpages, Longpages, etc, which are now (usually) calculated by a nightly cron job. Certain other special pages with less costly computations are still live, like Doubleredirects. Others like Whatlinkshere/image links/categories in templates are now calculated with a job queue that updates them amortized over a few minutes after the edit (see Special:Statistics). --Splarka (talk) 01:18, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

DHT?
Do you know what happened to the DHT? It was shot down a few years ago, but I still find these links. Can we still compete here? Ducon 07:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/dht/dht5/
 * http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~pliml/dht.html


 * At this point, your guess is as good as mine. (Maybe ask at the Doomworld forums?)  Those links look quite old, however &mdash; the top one lists Simon Widlake as the COMPET-N maintainer and rejoices that Quake 1 is finally on the shelves.    Ryan W 12:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * IIRC the Public DANG sometimes has similar contests, though not really systematized.   Ryan W 13:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Dylan in the community
I don't think Eric Harris and Dylan Kleybold were ever actually in the doom community.. they made some levels and published them on a website, but that's about the end of it, I think. -- Jdowland 12:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * *L*  So we VfD the articles because releasing levels doesn't by itself make people notable?


 * Given the amount of actual information in the article Columbine High School Massacre (i.e. not a lot, especially by comparison with the wikipedia article), maybe every related article could be merged in and made a redirect. Harris levels, for instance.    Ryan W 17:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think their articles should be deleted. I'm not sure if the content should be merged into the main Combine one. But my point is, they were people, but not community members, so a distinction between the two might be necessary. -- Jdowland 20:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that this type of notability is a sufficiently rare event that it doesn't merit a change to the infrastructure of the wiki. (And I say that as someone who has made such changes without waiting for a groundswell.  :>   Also, it seems confusing to redefine non-technical words, inasmuch as those new definitions are not in general use on Doom sites.  If we assume that Klebold isn't going to have his own article, then merging still sounds simpler to me.    Ryan W 05:10, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Technical support
By the way: I answered your post at central. Due to it being a default behavior in MediaWiki, it probably isn't something we should try to change on Wikia specifically. You might request on bugzilla.wikimedia.org a more intelligent diff engine, that can check more data and display more context if warranted. --Splarka (talk) 05:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! (Hey, and now I have more information about which Wikia help forum is supposed to correspond to which type of problem &mdash; that's always good.)    Ryan W 19:10, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

slime trails
I'm kind of curious. Why all the slime trail screenshots in E1M6? :-) Fraggle 16:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * * shrug *  Those were the ones I saw while watching the COMPET-N demos.  If there are that many in every large map, maybe they could be collected in their own article just for screen shots of slime trails (to reduce clutter in the map articles), but perhaps that would be overreacting.    Ryan W 17:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Doom colector's edition help
Hey Ryan, it's me Aaron Pepin. I use Doom collector's edition. I don't know how to use the dehacked program I downloaded (I used the recommended site from the doom wiki for the dehacked program). I can't make my own 32-level games from scratch and I can't use my own sprites, sounds, music, or textures. I also use doom builder downloaded from code imp. I want to make my own monsters and create different damages for them. But all I can do is make levels. My levels are pretty awesome too, but I want to make them more awesome! Can you help? I don't know much of the vocabulary also, like pWAD, megawad, patch, it's all too confusing! (Also, what do you use to make levels? If you do make wads?)


 * I'm afraid I know very little about DeHackEd. Most of what I do know comes from Enjay's reference documents, which include a series of worked examples to teach you how to do things.  How much you can edit also depends on which port you have in mind, EDGE for instance allowing you more freedom than, say, Doom95.


 * Many editors cannot handle graphics or sound patches, and AFAICT most editors do not allow group saves, at least in their shareware forms. Since you ask, my editor of choice is DeePsea, though I still use it mostly for bugfixes and wiki research, and have not had the nerve to release any of my own levels to the world at large (yet... the one I'm working on now might be good enough).  I have never used Doom Builder, but I would think that a 2.9MB manual is cause for optimism!


 * Your remarks about vocabulary are reminding me of yet another David Cook line &mdash; the game is big, but eventually you'll bring it under control. :>    Ryan W 03:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I will probebly somehow send in some WADS or something

Well...
Technically this isn't warez. It says it's abandonware, but I downloaded it and it's just the shareware version. It could be classified as spamming though, so you were right to revert an anon adding it. :-) oTHErONE (Contribs) 08:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I was at home, so I couldn't download it to check. But it was advertised as warez (unregistered shareware cannot become "abandonware" because you didn't have to pay for it in the first place), which may be sufficient to cause trouble, so I removed it.    Ryan W 18:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting that the same site does have the full (warez) version of Doom 2. So it probably isn't somewhere that we really want to be linking to. Fraggle 21:58, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Sysop


There you go! Fredrik 18:31, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you... I think.  :>     Whoa, new buttons &mdash; I didn't even have to log out and back in.    Ryan W 20:11, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Congratulations! I hereby present you with this cake as celebration of you finally becoming a sysop! Fraggle 20:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * * L * Very chuffed.  I assume this means you agree with Fredrik's "mop and bucket" evaluation.    Ryan W 21:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Congrats. You certainly deserve it. -- TheDarkArchon 13:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Uh...
Hey Ryan, why exactly did you make this edit? I don't think capitalisation matters with templates... oTHErONE (Contribs) 10:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * When you edit a template or a MediaWiki message string, the change doesn't show up in other articles (which include it) until those articles are themselves edited. So, to test my change to Template:Delete, I edited Ben "jassteX" Talbot in a way that altered the source code without actually affecting the article.  You can also, for example, add or remove blank lines at the very end.


 * I confess that "prod" may or may not be standard notation; I used it because I saw Jdowland using it. :>    Ryan W 11:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, ok. oTHErONE (Contribs) 12:28, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Just a note, the m:Job queue (status shown on Special:Statistics) is a system in MediaWiki that queues up modifications to templates (specifically to categories and images in templates), as well as images, MediaWiki: messages, and a few other things, and then goes through and m:null edits them all (that is, saves without any changes, which in most cases forces the page to update itself). This should make the manual null edit requirements almost totally deprecated (some exceptions include images or categories in templates that are both both transcluded and redirected). --Splarka (talk) 08:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey, that's good news! I had heard about the job queue, but for some reason didn't think it included the main space.  Also, I see here that the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.6 was more recent than this edit and this edit, so Jdowland's behavior was completely valid &mdash; it was just a case of me not keeping up with the news at central (and, realistically, I might not have remembered it anyway because so many refinements have accumulated by the time a new version is actually rolled out).  Thank you for the information, as always.    Ryan W 09:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Welcome ^_^... just so you know though, you usually don't have to change anything to do a purge. What I do if something isn't changing after something is edited that should have changed it: action=purge it like this, then reload my browser cache (ctrl+R), then null edit, then actual edit, then I bug a tech. --Splarka (talk) 11:50, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey Ryan
What the exactly did this guy do to Entryway? I know it was vandalism, but I can't seem to get a diff on it without it timing out... oTHErONE (Contribs) 03:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Diffs are sometimes hard to load when there are large changes, I'm told. Try viewing the old version by itself.    Ryan W 04:02, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. (Jeez, some admin should really consider semi-protecting Entryway...) oTHErONE (Contribs) 04:19, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ryan
Thanks to our comments on the Discussion page. I renamed the article to the name that you suggested and also merged to Songs which sample Doom sound effects. Sorry but i think that Doom Wiki have the same laws of English Wikipedia, talking of the fair-use. Thanks for your suggestions, i'm noob here ;P--Marctc 00:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Apologies for not responding sooner... If you read the policy page, you'll see that our fair use guidelines are pretty heuristic and vague, so no, they aren't much like Wikipedia's.  Even if we decided to adopt their rules, however (which might kill the project unless we could find external hosting), fair use has been hotly debated there over the last few months, so I'm not sure the Wikipedia users themselves know exactly what the policy is yet.    Ryan W 22:56, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Heretic, Hexen
Ryan

I tend to think that for

Hexen Hexen : Death Kings of the Dark Citadel

the only way to do a proper walkthough is links from each Hub rather than from each level. Level based => It is too confusing. In most cases you need to revisit a level several times as more parts of the level has opened up. Strictly speaking the secret levels of each Hub are not necessary to complete the level but they should be there.

I have played many times over on maximum difficulty for each character class. I know all the secrets.

If you apply the CDROM sound patch to DKofDC, it adds 5 DeathMatch levels + 1 transit level which allows you to access all 5 DM levels.

Heretic, Hexen & DKofDC show several signs of lack of polish by Raven:

Heretic: (i) Map E2M2 - lacks the Serpents with the Green balls outside the Green door. All other key doors have a Serpents with the apporopriate ball colour. It is the only one that lacks this. (ii) Map E5M8 - DeathMatch teleports dont work.

Hexen: Clerics "Amulet of Warding" is positioned off the map in Darkmere

Hexen DKofDC: (i) Extra cleric piece of Wrathverge in Catacombs (lacks symmetry with Fighter, Mage) (ii) Final mirror in Blight to next Hub is 1-way (iii) Dynamic red cloud missing from teleports in Market Place IDLover 00:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi IDLover, welcome to the wiki. I personally don't have any big plans for those articles, and I don't know that anyone else does, so you're welcome to expand or change them as time and desire allows.  My edits were meant only as a very small first/second step toward further organization.


 * Having said that, is it possible that we could someday have this amount of information about each map? If so, a single article for the entire hub would be unbelievably long and no one would plow through it.  I could understand combining all the "Essentials" sections into a single article (that's what I've been calling them anyway; see here and here for the reasoning that led to that section structure) because, as you say, it might make the overall route a lot clearer.  There must be a better way to handle the other parts than just stacking them on top of each other, however &mdash; think of the poor dialup users.    Ryan W 02:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Ryan: You're right, but I meant just the walkthrough, not merging articles on each level into a hub article. It is similar to discussing the United States as country and discussing each State like Arizona. You have to distinguish between what is at Federal level with what is at State level. It is just that unlike Doom, Doom 2, Heretic where you can do a walkthrough for each level, for Hexen and DKofDC, a walkthrough makes sense at hub level.

For instance on 1st Hub of Hexen You visit The Guardian of Ice 1) First time to flick central switch so that Guardian of Fire/Ice doors on Seven Portals opens up. 2) Second time to place Fire Mask and get Fire Key, get Steel Key 3) Third time (if you wish to visit Bright Crucible) to take portals to secret areas of Guardian of Fire/Ice

So I am saying - discuss things pertinent to the hub at hub level (walkthrough, hub objectives) - discuss things pertinent to each map at map level (items on map, map overview, monsters, secrets)

IDLover 11:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I ought also to say that I am far from an authority on Hexen (not sure I've actually played it since 1999), so I am not really certain of the best way to write walkthroughs.  My comments above should be taken as, at most, an arithmetic perspective.    Ryan W 16:42, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Ryan
after years I did a google search, since I had a discussion about games like doom

My name is anthe and I just read your small article in doom wiki. I just wanted to add that the abbreviation 'AAK' a) is still active (so it s not occasionally imho) b) comes not only from Andreas Anthe Kren but is older than the 'Anthe' nick, my first girlfriend was named 'Alexandra Aichner' :).

Of course I know about the minor importance of all this but one thing hasnt changed in me: I am a perfectionist :).

greez

you can answer me if you like: 


 * *L*  Wow, an avalanche of celebrities!


 * I replied with an e-mail, which said:

Your post to the Doom Wiki was quite a surprise, and a pleasant one. I don't know you, but I have admired your work for years, at least since I saw FDUVDEMO and learned that non-Tyson films were worth my time. :>

I've attempted to revise the article to reflect the information you provided. I can't guarantee its permanence, however, as the knowledge base is open-content, and therefore no part of it is really "mine" -- we're just borrowing it from future generations, who need it much more than we do.
 * Ryan W 03:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Master Levels article names
If one were to create articles for each of the Master Levels for Doom II, what would the recommended article names be? For example, if one were to create an article for Bloodsea Keep (BLOODSEA.WAD,) would the best title for it be "MAP07: Bloodsea Keep (Master Levels)" (the level occupies MAP07,) or "Bloodsea Keep (Master Levels)"? Mind you, I haven't obtained the Master Levels yet, but an answer would be appreciated for those who want to make articles for 'em. Thanks in advance! TheGreenHerring 19:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That's an excellent question. I like your first idea, because it is consistent with all of our other articles about OEM maps.  The unusual case would be the umbrella article for TEETH.WAD, because it is a commercially released PWAD with more than one but less than nine maps.  On the other hand, the readme file could be interpreted to mean that The Express Elevator to Hell is also the name of the WAD, in which case we could call it "The Express Elevator to Hell (Master Levels)".  Or maybe we wouldn't write an umbrella article because it would contain no information not already present in Master Levels for Doom II.


 * As you say, however, it may be a while before a decision is needed. Also, obviously, my opinions can be overruled by consensus (again).    Ryan W 04:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

That's really sad that, you stay up on this untill after midnight blasting someone who was only trying to help

Doom is a game you play on the P.C., not a scientific way of your sad boring life or the topic of an essay This comment was added by TheGuyWhoHatesBloodshedder&Ryan.W

ChexQuest image
Hello, this is "PlantPerson" from wikipedia responding to your question regarding the "chexQuest" image I posted to wikipedia. I apologize for the slow response, it has been a while since I logged into wikipedia. The image is simply a photograph which I took of the game's CD. I thought that since it was my photo, I had the right to release it into public domain. I always have trouble with the permissions for images, they confuse me. Do you think the license needs to change?

Pony vandalism
Please ban this pony. Ducon 19:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks; looks like someone else already did it.   Ryan W 17:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

More vandalism
Ryan, have a look at and the 2nd entry by Paul Butterfield. IDLover 20:47, 10 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I saw that, but I decided to leave its adjudication to more expert researchers. It certainly looks fake, but with gamers, you can never be 100 percent sure.    Ryan W 17:33, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I have spent 20 minutes googling "Camille Espanol". I can find references to such people, but not those with a gamer or Doom connection. The only connection is here. Nothing on the web or usenet. In contrast '"Dr Sleep" Doom' or '"Orin Flaherty" Doom' turns up web and usenet links. So I am almost 100% certain it is fake. It is not praising Doom, it is talking about a gamers talents. In contrast all the other quotes are about Doom.


 * Hunh. In that case it is probably okay to remove it (keep in mind, however, that authenticity and subject matter are two distinct issues, and we don't yet have a policy about the latter).  At the moment I am only going to block the second contributor since that edit was much more obnoxious.    Ryan W 20:43, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Monster disambiguation
Hi Ryan, sorry to nag you but you're a very reliable mod here. :> I am inclined to revert this Move but as a peon I can't delete the page that replaced it first in order to do so.

I understand there is a general rule that classic Doom monsters get articles named after them, as there is a primary focus on classic Doom; conflicting Doom 3 monster articles (or Doom-related monsters in any game, theoretically) should have titles ending followed with "(Doom 3)". All of the corresponding articles have been consistent with this rule which is why I find the recent change should be reverted.

Thanks :) Zack 00:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Done Bloodshedder 01:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Bloodshedder. To be fair, while Zaximus is correct that vanilla takes precedence in our article content, the policy page doesn't actually say that this extends to article/category titles.  If it were me, I would ask the community's opinion first, simply because of the sheer number of edits involved (imagine having four or five articles for each of id's maps, which differ slightly among console ports).  On the other hand, User:Chex guy doesn't seem to have noticed our capitalization convention, or double-check his markup before saving , so maybe he didn't see the article count on the front page either.    Ryan W 15:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Something tells me...
...that you'll never want to look at an image again. Zack 21:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about?  :D     Actually I think this wiki is getting too large for such projects anyway; that one started when I decided to check for logical inconsistencies in the categorization of categories, which is now basically done.  Hopefully the images are sorted carefully enough now that if we decide to make another change, the first pass can be done by a bot.  (Jdowland is always saying he's going to write a bot.)    Ryan W 22:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Elastic collisions with walls
It's been almost two years since you added this to the bugs list and there's still no article, so I want to put something together. I just wanted to make sure we're on the same page though: Are "elastic collisions with walls" what you call the phenomenon that involves trying to slide along a wall, and being thrown away from it or moving unpredictably? The result is a kind of rough, shaky movement as opposed to a smooth slide. You also refer to it as "snag" here. Zack 01:48, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * No, what I meant was that the Doomguy runs full speed into a wall, but instead of stopping, recoils in the opposite direction with nearly the same speed. The player seems to have some control over whether or not it happens, depending on when he takes his finger off the key (not sure I am skilled enough to exploit it in a real game, but the COMPET-N people do), and IIRC the bug was also present in Wolfenstein.


 * The "snag" is something I hadn't thought about in detail, just some adversity I noticed while trying to make a wallrunning demo on an oblique wall. In light of the code-related comments since posted at Talk:Wallrunning, however, snag could arguably form an article in itself!    Ryan W 02:18, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. The "snag" is just one of those forgotten bugs, I think - You either notice it a couple times and don't care, or you're so used to it that you forget it's even a problem, and just accept it as normal Doom behavior. At least, that's how it happened with me. :P


 * Can you point me to a demo demonstrating the Elasticity you had in mind? I wonder if its cause is similar to "snagging" as well? Zack 02:37, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * so used to it that you forget it's even a problem, and just accept it  Yeah, let's hope that hasn't happened to me with keyboard rollover.  ;>


 * Fast-forward to 1:55 in, and watch Kai-Uwe fire the SSG twice, then go for that first red switch. Boing!    Ryan W 07:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Would you happen to be able to share your copy of doom2.exe? The demo is desyncing in Chocolate Doom. Thanks :P Also is there a way to contact you outside of this Wiki? My email address is zack18 at comcast dot net. Zack 14:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Edit - nevermind the strike-out texte. Zack 14:49, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Final Doom demos for COMPET-N are supposed to be recorded with v1.9, so when you play them with a port, you have to set the compatibility to "v1.9", not "Final Doom". Actually I think anyone seriously interested in old demos should learn to use PrBoom+ because it gives you the finest degree of control over the compatibility options &mdash; even for vanilla demos, bug emulation may never be perfect.   :>


 * My e-mail address was registered last time I checked. If it's not, then people's e-mail addresses may have gotten wiped out in the upgrade, which is a bug that I keep hoping I won't have to report.   :Z     Ryan W 06:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay - I was always thrown off by Final Doom demos. A lot of them are recorded in "native" Final Doom instead of with Doom 2 v1.9, including some 30-level runs. Thanks for explaining that for me.


 * I'm sorry - I'm not super-experienced with Wikia ... but I don't see your email address anywhere. Where's it supposed to appear? Zack 17:04, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * On this page (for example), you can click "E-mail this user" in the toolbox on the left.   Ryan W 17:12, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Found it! This skin shows the link at the bottom. I feel stupid ;-; Zack 18:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, whoops. I keep forgetting that nobody besides me still uses the old skin.   :P     Ryan W 18:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ryan, I sent you an email some time ago. Did you ever get it? Zack 18:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I got it. Sorry to be so long in responding &mdash; graduate school sometimes doesn't leave huge amounts of space in my brain for subtle questions, which is what your question is.  (ETA: that's meant as a compliment.)    Ryan W 23:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Aspect Ratio
"Note that the automap is not generated by the rendering engine, so it does not automatically inherit the aspect ratio correction of a given port (see figure)."

This is confusing to me. The screenshot is taken from vanilla Doom, where the automap was distorted because no compensation was in place for rectangular pixels. It is not meant to be compared to source ports. What are you trying to say here?

Edit: The same goes for Automap, in which you modified the image caption and removed the paragraph for which I originally uploaded the image. Zack 21:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * (Sorry to be so long in responding again &mdash; I've been away at a conference for the past week.) What I was trying to say was, "If you try to play vanilla with a 4:3 resolution, both the rendered view and the automap are distorted.  If you instead use a source port with a 4:3 resolution, aspect ratio correction tries to fix the rendered view, but leaves the automap unchanged."


 * My goal in changing those two articles was to keep a cross-reference between them while removing as much duplicate information as possible. I suppose I tend to err on the side of the latter because of all the disambig stuff I've done here.  In this case, I also didn't playtest as extensively as others apparently have, so perhaps my edits were a bit heavy-handed; feel free to modify them.    Ryan W 11:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Your edits on Doom II
I don't quite understand the purpose of this edit you made. Why did you rename the "Doom II weapons" section into "Doom weapons" and remove the links pointing to the Wikipedia articles of the games mentioned in the article? -- Janizdreg 16:52, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Um... wow. I actually have no idea.  Maybe that was the day the ad servers were really slow and I lost track of which old revisions I was loading to revert things?  The other two changes, where I added/removed italic marks, were the ones I meant to make.  I've fixed it, sorry.    Ryan W 19:24, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Foxing
There's been various copyright-related actions or cases due to mods, namely outside DOOM. The event that helped coin the term in question was related to the Alien Quake mod, and is not DOOM specific. I don't remember that anything for DOOM was ever really "foxed". Foxing is not an explicit term, and if it appears in any media (including general gaming site) articles and such, it is as a side-note (sometimes known as "foxing" to gamers). It's not even dealt with in the Wikipedia. I'd use it only in an article about something that literally got "foxed", and I'd say what foxing means in the process, especially if any sources related to the event used the term. Thus, an article about it shouldn't be worthwhile in this wiki. Who is like God? 03:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Names from the manuals
Responding to this, the monster names are not proper names, regardless of the styling in the manuals. The guideline about names shouldn't override the (I think) policy about the use of caps (which is basically to use them only when really necessary). At most, "The Cyberdemon and "The Spiderdemon" may be proper names, but only as long as we are referring to the individual bosses found in DOOM itself, and not to such a monster in general.

Rather than literalism, let's go for materialism, where the manuals act more like a secondary source that may help in some cases that need clarification, and where the primary one is what we play and mod, the direct game materials. Who is like God? 17:10, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * To continue the conversation, I think some archaizing authors such as Tolkien may have furthered the use of caps for species and the like, who used them for Elves, Orcs and so on to present them as "peoples" or more or less like nations rather than just classes of creatures. At least in some books; not in The Hobbit, for example (he probably wasn't so anal because it was aimed more towards kids). But on the other hand D&D adventure modules have started monster names with lower case letters since the start, because after all saying orc in general is little different from saying wolf or rat. Like D&D, DOOM is just a game and its creatures don't have complex "cultural" explanations that need special casing to show some aspect of that.


 * I was myself a proponent of capitalizing monster names before I started editing (some forum posts show this), but it is annoying to do so over and over, especially since there is no disambiguating need to do so. Besides, in the manual even stuff like Rocket Launcher uses caps... we might as well move over to the German DOOM wiki if we want to capitalize nouns indiscriminately (which is not a practical option for me as my German tends toward Null, heh).


 * For language it's best to use common sense and general editor-level usage, rather than adopting many arbitrary styles found in some sources. If something really needs a certain format or style for clarity, then it can be adopted. Who is like God? 20:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Shotgun "shell" damage
Editing the shotgun article I gnawed like a hungry rat at something you just added; a note saying that even though the monster and the player inflict different damage, the shells dropped by the zombies still inflict full damage when used by the player. That info is not suitable there, I argue, because the article isn't explaining these technical elements against any realism. The things that cause damage are the player using shotgun, and the monster attacking, the shells are simply units that fill the player's supplies. There's no need to explain that some shells do different damage because the shells don't have anything to do with the damage inflicted in the first place. The fact that the shotgun and the shotgun guy fire different amounts of pellets is given in each corresponding article (shotgun and shotgun guy), properly linking that damage to those things (not the items picked up).

I think, in fact, that in the past I've removed a similar note in some article.

To eliminate any ambiguity to people obsessed with realism I changed "shotgun" to "player's shotgun" in the article's Combat characteristics section.

By the way, we should get rid of the specific skill level links on the items per game tables, substituting them for one link to skill level, possibly right over the table ("the numbers of per skill level"). I think I did it already in one table but I don't remember which. Who is like God? 21:47, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * That info is not suitable there, I argue, because the article isn't explaining these technical elements against any realism.  I didn't add that because of realism, but to match the analogous statement which has been in the chaingun article for years.  Your point about the data tables is perfectly valid and probably does make such statements extraneous (although there are indeed games where confiscated ammo is inequivalent &mdash; Waste Land and New Centurions come to mind).  Additionally, I have no objection to changing the links in the skill level tables.  I believe the edit you are referring to is this one.   :>     Ryan W 22:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmm, then maybe I hadn't removed anything before... must have just though "is this helping here?" (unless it was also in Pistol). Well, I did now :p


 * Aditionally the chaingun appears in Hitscan. Maybe the hitscan and projectile articles could have some general data (number of pellets, damage, speed, and whatever else applies) about weapons and monsters using them, so that readers can compare all the differences from one source. Who is like God? 23:22, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. The projectile article could certainly describe stuff like the common field in the mobjinfo variable (or whatever it's called), whose value is the number of eight-sided "damage dice".  I don't know that the hitscan attacks share quite so much code, especially if both players and monsters are included and melee attacks are considered as well.    Ryan W 23:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)