Talk:Amulets & Armor

I've started working on hacking the file formats of Amulets & Armor, finding the A&A-specific differences and thing types and all that. Should I put that here? (Well, in A&A related subpages. Like Amulets & Armor thing types for example) Travis Wells 09:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Notability is a confusing topic around here, as you may already have noticed. :>   My take: Technical information is indeed valuable because we want to be a good resource for persons studying and modifying such programs.  Try not to go overboard in this case, however, since Amulets & Armor is clearly not as notable as Heretic (e.g.).    Ryan W 19:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that this is actually based on the Doom engine. Certainly it uses the Doom WAD format (the .map files are all WAD files containing Doom levels), but running strings on the exe doesn't seem to turn up anything similar to what you find in the Doom exes. It looks to me more like they wrote their own Doom-like engine and used the Doom level format to avoid having to write their own level editor. Fraggle 17:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Though for many community members, that might be as close to "based on the Doom engine" as was no matter, since all they care about is whether or not they can make PWADs that work with it.    Ryan W 19:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Don't believe this is actually a Doom engine game
I've examined the executable and a lot of the data and I firmly believe that AnA is not actually a Doom engine game (besides the total lack of mention anywhere that I've ever seen to confirm that it is, aside from this wiki). What I believe this game's developer did was use Doom's level format so that they could use DeepSea as their editor and save on a lot of time and money that would have otherwise been necessary to develop support tools.

Important facts:
 * WADs are used ONLY to store maps, and each WAD contains only one map.
 * Graphics are not in Doom's format. Sounds are not in Doom's format.
 * The game uses a simple form of scripting to control what line actions do, none of which match Doom in any way.
 * Game play mechanics are completely different, and the user interface is highly developed, a far cry from Doom's clunky menus.
 * Most importantly, the executable file contains NO strings from the Doom source, and the compiled code size is not at all comparable to doom.exe -- I see no evidence that the code has anything in common at all with Doom other than the ability to load wad files for the purpose of retrieving a single map from them.

So for the purposes of this wiki, it would probably be appropriate to stop calling this game a Doom engine game and rather refer to it as a game which happens to use the Doom map format. This wasn't the only game to do this, and it wasn't the latest either -- CodeImp's Bloodmasters, a modern multiplayer game, also uses the format. Right now I'm leaving it be, but consider this a warning from the factual accuracy police ;) --Quasar 05:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I concur. Fraggle 19:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Some of those points don't convince me very much, especially the line action and user interface stuff (these are precisely the things you'd expect a licensee to change), but the lack of doom engine strings in the executable is a strong one. Search+replacing every random string in the engine, and then being left with something difficult to debug because the I_Error messages don't mesh up with function and variable names?  ("I_Error: Doohickey Limit Reached!")  That seems rather unlikely.  Also, the 3d engine used has mipmapping, which Doom does not. 71.58.109.233 03:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Other games that might fit this description:
 * Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance
 * Radix: Beyond the Void
 * Since the relationship with the Doom engine is more tenuous than usual (contrary to what I said at the top of this page), perhaps we only need one article listing all of them, instead of one article per title?   Ryan W 22:07, September 3, 2009 (UTC)