Doomsday Engine

This would be quite difficult because the source code of those pre-release versions is not available.

- status: open --> closed
- milestone: --> Eventually

Apologies if the below comes across and rude and/or presumptuous, not to mention it's hardly 'technical' in nature. I got thinking about it and got carried away.

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Category:Alphas

The source code doesn't exist no, but one could perhaps attempt to mimic the obvious differences, as time permits? It seems like support for most of the differences will co-incidentally be added to Dday 2 as it achieves it’s goals of supporting other games, other ports features and it's own planned features:

I exclude mentioning reading the data formats in the Iwads each time, as it’s applicable to every one (though there is a lot of overlap/similarity in the data formats each version uses). I was also a little unsure about mentioning menu differences versus the final game, as Dday already replaces a large chunk of the original Doom menu’s due to their options being irrelevant to Dday.

Press Release

Lives: Dday will have to support this for support of many Wolf Engine games (PCWolf3D, Wolf3D:SOD, MacWolf3D, BlakeAOG, BlakePS, PCNoah3D). I assume suitable features from game X will be made globally available to modders of all games?

A Score: Same as above.

Item Counter: Same as above.

Messages displayed in hud bar and automap hud displays collected weapons: Dday's future custom Hud support?

Plasma Rifle/BFG differences: One assumes Dday's mobj defs will be able to handle this in future or Decorate would.

The original Lost Soul and Rocket Launcher speed changes; Can already be achieved with Dday's existing mobj editing support.

Ouch face used for Damaging floors: Dday's future custom Hud support?

Various colormap switches (i.e the Press Release partial invisibility pickup using the negative colormap used for invulnerability in the final game): Support for custom pickups would be required for Decorate support and one can assume that allowing modders to attach a custom colormap or tint effect would then be a short step away (if Decorate doesn’t already support this; I admit that I’m not sure whether it supports this specific feature).

Lifts are much slower: Dday’s XG can already achieve this.

Alternate cheat codes: Dday already supports HacX and Chex Quests cheat codes; both games which use the Doom plugin. But Dday doesn’t currently support the HeXen demo versions cheat codes.

Alternate level order: Custom episode menus are a ZDoom modding feature and thus Dday will have to include similar functionality to support many ZDoom mods.

Alpha 0.2

It supports floor, ceiling and wall graphic cycling with a key. The Wolf3D engine game, Operation Body Count, features toggling between textured flats and solid colour floors with a key in game, which could provide a start to such once OBC is supported. Obviously, OBC is likely very far down the list of Wolf3D engine games to support though, perhaps at the very bottom, due a number of reasons before we even get to the popular opinion of the game’s quality.

The Titlepic uses a separate palate; Heretic and Wolf3D: SOD require this feature for splash screens, so I imagine it is almost certain to appear at some point.

As far as I am aware, there is nothing else of note feature wise in this release; a ded with Dday’s current features, could imitate the limited gameplay functionality and Dday’s custom hud support could surely mimic the in functional (i.e purely visual) ‘helmet display’.

No automap: whether Dday would mimic this or simply provide the final game’s automap as an ‘enhancement’ is open to debate? I mean, I could imagine PCWolf3D gaining an automap as an ‘enhancement’, in Dday.

Smaller weapon selection: functionality wise, one assumes supporting this would be no different from Shareware Doom versus Full Version?

Alpha 0.4

Prone feature: given the level of gameplay functionality, it doesn’t seem to do anything other than lower the camera view. Fully implemented crouching would be required for ZDoom support, which could be considered support for this Alpha 0.4 feature

The spinning 3D title: I’m going to be presumptuous and imagine that Infine will get a bunch of special effects at some point, that may well include this?

In terms of gameplay functionality, there again doesn’t seem to be anything Dday can’t already do with a ded.

The new hud is again another decorative graphic (i.e like 0.2, it has no actual functionality); again one assumes Dday’s custom hud support could mimic such a simple hud.

A level select on the main menu: If Dday can’t support this, one assumes there could always be a custom level select menu that simply displays all of them.

Lack of texture repeating: ?

No automap; same as Alpha 0.2.

Alpha 0.5
The status bar as seen in 0.4, now has functionality; I’m going to assume Dday’s custom hud support could do this, as it would be kind of redundant if it couldn’t.

Pickups that have no effect; the first Alpha, where the player can pick them up. Dday already has support for pickups that do nothing when picked up due to removing a limitation of Vanilla Doom in the past.

This Alpha doesn’t seem to have to have any unique features that aren’t present in the final game or 0.4. A ded could again handle the gameplay functionality.