User talk:Xymph

Archived discussions
2016 | 2017-2018

MAYhem mayhem
I had no idea that map was renamed. I used to take the names from the MAPINFO lump and I've got a copy of "mayhem2048.wad" where it's still called Sheltered Outpost. It's great when beta releases aren't marked as such. --Eris Falling (talk) 08:17, 6 August 2019 (CDT)
 * And I wasn't aware that the overview page had been created from a (unidentified) beta. Thanks for the clarification. --Xymph (talk) 10:28, 6 August 2019 (CDT)

gamers.org URLs
Sorry about that. This is another case where the age of my environment impedes me from seeing every situational detail (like the security certificates). Sometimes a browser cruises right past warning dialogs. :>

That said, I just noticed you *did* clarify the situation for users like me: "You can also use a Browser and use HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), which is what is used by the links below."  Clearly not the same as the /idstuff links I replaced. So I'll remember that for future cases where Doomworld or 3ddownloads is missing items (which again I assume are ultimately the Doomworld staff's purview). Thanks for double-checking. Ryan W (living fossil) 12:06, 31 January 2020 (CST)

Source modification
Hi Xymph, I just saw your edit on source modification - External links: sort first in its own cat)

Looking at the change and reading your message, i'd need some additional clarity. What has to be done extra?

To put in advance: I did see that its quite redundant to have the article source modification when the header already says that the main article is in fact, source modification. But that's just as far as i got with it. Thanks in advance. -- Redneckerz (talk) 18:41, 27 April 2020 (CET)


 * Nothing more has to be done:  to sort the main article (correctly referenced via catmore) for a category first in that category. My edit accomplished that, that's all.
 * I don't see anything particularly redundant, so not sure what you're referring to above. --Xymph (talk) 12:23, 27 April 2020 (CDT)
 * Oh. Well, you see, the attached text made it sound like an task that had to be done (Sort first in its own cat) so that got me confused. Good to hear it was a nothingburger, then! Thanks Xymph for clarification. -- Redneckerz (talk) 21:08, 27 April 2020 (CET)


 * That happened elsewhere today too, but edit summaries normally describe what the edit accomplishes, not what another editor should do. ;-) For such discussions there are talk pages. --Xymph (talk) 14:16, 27 April 2020 (CDT)
 * Somewhere i knew and it just did not register haha ;) Nevertheless thank you for all your hard work done here and its beeing a great learning school for me. -- Redneckerz (talk) 21:27, 27 April 2020 (CET)

Interwiki table
Hi Xymph. This doesn't impact your edits, which look good, but see here and here. It isn't case sensitive. The interwiki extension simply does not backfill links when a prefix is added, like Whatlinkshere or Linksearch would, necessitating an edit to each page. (And since it's more difficult to identify affected pages, Quasar was probably right to be irritated when I removed those entries.) HTH. Ryan W (living fossil) 07:23, 5 May 2020 (CDT)
 * Oh, ok. Thanks for the clarification. --Xymph (talk) 07:32, 5 May 2020 (CDT)

Crazy idea #2
I might could code a selector and cookie storage for the table color scheme you're experimenting with so that users could choose one that looks good to them. This is particularly sensible for accessibility reasons (ie, various forms of colorblindness may make a good looking default in our opinion hard to parse for other people). --Quasar (talk) 07:08, 12 July 2020 (CDT)


 * I realized that accessibility/colorblindness would make finding a good compromise scheme harder, so yeah, crazy idea but it could be helpful. Let me know how it will work so I can incorporate it in the table generation script. --Xymph (talk) 09:13, 12 July 2020 (CDT)

Hope this is useful
Regarding your email questions: User:Quasar/Sandbox/Doom 64 info --Quasar (talk) 12:12, 13 July 2020 (CDT)
 * Thanks, this is more complete but I got the parts relevant for DMMPST from Edward850 already. --Xymph (talk) 12:21, 13 July 2020 (CDT)
 * Cool. --Quasar (talk) 12:40, 13 July 2020 (CDT)

Reviewing changes
Hello there. I wanted to know if you have the ability to review other users' contributions? Because it seems other users with this ability are currently busy. I've been making some contributions, but they haven't been reviewed in quite a while already. This is the reason why I'm asking. I apologize if it's an inconvenience. Hfc2x (talk) 13:20, 9 November 2020 (CST)
 * I review/approve a lot of edits, but only if I'm familiar enough with the subject matter (or they're trivial enough that this doesn't matter). For your DE edits, that does not apply. Quasar is busy but may get around to them at some point. --Xymph (talk) 13:38, 9 November 2020 (CST)
 * Oh, that's okay. Thanks for your reply! Hfc2x (talk) 15:08, 9 November 2020 (CST)

Nomenclature and spacing
Hey Xymph. I've noticed that you cleaned up a lot of incorrect bits of capitalisation (like Hell knight) and spacing (BFG9000) in most of my edits. My bad. Is there a page where I can see all of the official spellings so I don't create any more avoidable work for you and other curators? Thanks. Jack Kellar (talk) 13:32, 9 November 2020 (CST)
 * Why, the policies and guidelines, of course. ;) And searching for the canonical articles also helps. Although it's not required to use canonical wording all the time, minor variations are usually captured via redirects. --Xymph (talk) 13:46, 9 November 2020 (CST)

DSDA link migration (side note)
This seems harsh TBH. I hope no one really expected you to complete such a large task to match another site's roadmap, which wasn't even announced in advance. (Andy's departure, at least, seemed to surprise people.) I too held out hope for more development: they have some very skilled contributors, and my impression from Wikipedia's API discussions was that if any validated output has reached the public, the most difficult milestone is passed, and adding more columns and rows is simpler.

(deep breath) In any event, it's great to hear that such a large piece of this implementation is done. I really do want to follow up some loose ends while the new code is still somewhere near your front burner... but I keep finding offline obligations under every rock this year. :> Ryan W (living fossil) 10:57, 4 December 2020 (CST)


 * Well, I said that about myself and it didn't feel harsh to me. :-) Besides the aforementioned reasons, I was also surprised by the shutdown of Andy's site. Older Compet-n and DSDA sites are still online so it was unexpected to have an intermediate site drop out of the middle of the timeline. But in my projects I always try to think at least one step ahead, so if I had really thought about it, I would have concluded the template migration to be a good idea sooner, and we'd have avoided the period of dead/archived links altogether. And there's still plenty left to do, e.g. collection zips have not (yet?) been made available on the new DSDA.
 * Anyway, thanks for your kind support, as always. If you don't mind, I'm not holding my breath for loose ends though. ;-) --Xymph (talk) 14:18, 4 December 2020 (CST)


 * Haha, fair enough. I am pretty sure the collection zips are still there, but with new IDs and without landing pages, so they look like single runs until inflated.  I am also doubtful there's a reason to prefer a landing page link to a (working) file deeplink, unless for some reason one cited the transactional fact of Andy posting the file.  But I plan to examine those also, if I'm optimistic.  :>  Thanks,  Ryan W (living fossil) 22:20, 4 December 2020 (CST)

PSX's MAP14 and MAP10 bugs section removal
Hi! vanilla doesn't distinguish DM/coop, the monsters are there for coop

However, PSX Doom is unique in this. Multiplayer flag is only used to spawn anything on DM only. Coop things spawn the same as they do in Single. --MtErebus (talk) 07:00, 1 February 2021 (CST)
 * Oh, I wasn't aware of that, shoulda asked first. But it is also not mentioned on the Sony PlayStation page, so that would be a useful info bit there. --Xymph (talk) 07:06, 1 February 2021 (CST)


 * It may in fact be a quirk inherited from the Jaguar version; I literally just noticed an oddity surrounding that in Calico yesterday. --Quasar (talk) 00:25, 2 February 2021 (CST)

Mapping tables
I was wondering, what is the mapping table concern regarding The Alfonzone? A quick look through the DECORATE file suggests that, apart from a whole host of custom props as is common to see in many megawads, the only things that I could see affecting the gameplay are two items. The first is called TalismanOfHealth (doomednum 20001) and grants the player a regeneration effect lasting for about 15 seconds, and colours the screen with a very light shade of orange. I have no idea where this is used in the maps as I don't recall ever seeing it, but the other item of interest is even more mundane: it is called MysteriousArtefact (doomednum 20002) and has no effect by itself, however the pickup message is "You have the Mysterious Artefact! Now get the hell out!" which would suggest it is used by one of the map's scripts for one purpose or another. There are otherwise no custom enemies, no custom weapons, not even any other type of custom inventory as far as I can see besides this, and given that both of those items appear to be used very sparingly (if at all), I don't think there should be any mapping table issues preventing the map articles from being automatically generated, provided there isn't something else I'm not aware of.

Another mod I would like to discuss is NeoDoom. This mod is notorious for its very poorly balanced custom enemies in what is otherwise fairly good level design, but a lesser known fact which the wiki does reference is that it's supposed to have different custom enemies (or none at all) depending on which source port it is played on. Some of the enemies use DeHackEd, others use DECORATE, and I have no idea exactly what custom enemies if any are supposed to show up on NeoDoom, but this makes it probably one of the more complicated megawads to cover in doom modding history, so I am unsure on what approach to take here. One thing I've thought of is simply using vanilla resources and treating all the custom stuff as superfluous additions, but I'm not sure if that's the best course of action. The megawad is in fact playable and balanced when played only using vanilla actors though, and there is even a zdoom-compatible version called NeoDoom: Vaccinated Edition which has been hosted on zandronum with all the custom stuff removed to reinforce that fact. How do you think this should be approached?

Lastly, is there any mod you would want me to focus on when it comes to creating mapping tables? I see Gauss has been making some, was wondering if you had any specific requests regarding what you would like to see done. Regards! --Dynamo128 (talk) 16:40, 18 February 2021 (CST)


 * Re. Alfonzone, the general concern was simply that it has a lengthy Decorate and it's not an effective use of my time to analyze it myself. The wiki is a collaborative effort and if we look at the big picture what we can most effectively contribute together, given everyone's time constraints, then it's map series by me based on overview articles by others. Also, I left the Doom community in the late '90s and returned in 2016, so am unfamiliar with many mods, their development history and reception. And I also don't follow much of the DW forums. So overviews are better suited to those who are (more) familiar with the pertaining mods, IMHO.
 * Specifically, back when I parked this one, I wasn't very familiar with Decorate to begin with and DMMPST didn't support UDMF yet either. The overview article doesn't describe relevant custom things yet, and I see references to episodes (also in .txt and MAPINFO), which aren't in the map list either (nor is the soundtrack listing). So if that article would be expanded with all the relevant info, then I can start on the map skeletons.
 * Re. Neodoom, I have no idea (see above), and since you're not familiar with it either, my simple suggestion is: leave it to someone who is. Even if that takes months/years; it's not like there's nothing else left to do around here. :)
 * So thanks for requesting suggestions, I'd say the first group of my backlog has precedence, as for those map articles already exist but have no or (possibly) inaccurate thing tables. After verifying the correctness of Valiant's and DsDoom 3's mapping files, I don't have any major preference. Pick the ones you're interested in. When that group has been whittled down, there's always the second one... thanks for your help! --Xymph (talk) 12:26, 20 February 2021 (CST)


 * Very well. Just to make sure though, props are in fact supposed to be ignored for such mapping tables, correct? Regardless of whether they are DECORATE, DeHackEd or mere sprite replacements. It's not just The Alfonzone that has a lot of them but also other mods and maps which have large DECORATE files with nothing in them except custom props. --Dynamo128 (talk) 09:00, 21 February 2021 (CST)


 * Well, so much the easier then. Inanimate obstacles/decorations with no playable value can indeed be ignored. Sprite/name replacements for existing things are however relevant, e.g. keys with a different color. When in doubt, raise the issue on the pertaining WAD's talk page, and we'll work it out. I can do DMMPST trial runs to find which map(s) contain a given thing. --Xymph (talk) 10:21, 21 February 2021 (CST)

Linking
Hey Xymph, on the Egyptian map I only linked the DBP part to Doomer Boards Projects because at this moment there is no page specifically for DBP23: Evil Egypt. I don't understand your edit. Do we have a different linking policy here on Doomwiki? Because at the Wikipedia that kind of vague/unclear linking is discouraged and more precise linking is advised.--Tetzlaff (talk) 13:42, 9 April 2021 (CDT)


 * English Wikipedia is more pedantic about a lot of things than other wikis, including non-English Wikipedias. Individual articles for each DBP project are not foreseen (and certainly not their individual maps), and styling DBP23 as you did sorta obscured the link part, that's why I changed it to include the whole project name. But I am not aware of a specific linking policy here that covers this. --Xymph (talk) 14:57, 9 April 2021 (CDT)


 * Okay, thanks for your answer. I think individual articles for the DBPs should be done some time, since they are high quality mini episodes. If that is done, we can redo the links.--Tetzlaff (talk) 22:55, 9 April 2021 (CDT)


 * I am not familiar with how long-running series like DBP, ASS, JoM and the like are regarded, but feel that for the wiki, a lot of other WADs should have priority: Cacoward winners and runners-up, major community releases like DMP and other notable WADs, and numerous existing articles with incomplete coverage. --Xymph (talk) 05:47, 10 April 2021 (CDT)
 * I took my time to create an article for DBP23, which is always a bit laborious since English isn't my first language. I see that you want help with those other unfinished articles, but no harm done.--Tetzlaff (talk) 06:07, 10 April 2021 (CDT)

How to edit this wiki
Hi I'm the anon that created the Heartland page. Sorry that you guys had to go in and flesh everything out; I wanted to help because I go on this wiki a lot and I figured that I should start with Heartland cause its a wad by skillsaw. Anyway, I'm a regular editor on the Binding of Isaac Rebirth wiki (the one that used to be gamepedia) and I have a lot of editing experience but I wanted to talk to someone about the best ways to go about editing on this wiki. I know every wiki has their own practices and the technical stuff like templates and how to make text bold and stuff similar to that. You clearly have a lot of experience editing this wiki and I would like to learn from you and ask you questions about editing and my edits if that is ok. --Cacadem0n64 talk 03:52, 29 April 2021 (UTC).


 * Welcome to the wiki. Specific questions are okay, but consider Central Processing for important general topics rather than any individual's talk page. Some general advice: a lot can be learned from how existing similar articles are formatted/styled, and the Policies and guidelines, our FAQ, and MediaWiki also provide a lot of answers. If English isn't your native language, consider using a English spelling/grammar checker. The toolbar above the edit window provides shortcuts to common style settings & templates. Learning how to use templates effectively takes time, but many contain a how-to section on their own pages. Preview & Show changes on your edits before submitting them to help avoid accidental mishaps making it into an article. Most of the initial skeleton work on (series of) map articles is partly automated via XymphBot so it's usually best to wait until the dust settles on that before fleshing them out manually. Keep an eye on Recent Changes to see how contributions are reviewed/improved.
 * For Heartland in particular, the custom monster/weapon descriptions are useful, but to generate the maps' Things tables I would really welcome a table in wiki or .tsv format.
 * While quality of information and coherent/consistent styling of the wiki are important to regular contributors and the community at large, it's also important that one simply enjoys contributing as little/much as one is comfortable with. Many improvements on the wiki don't happen overnight or even, uhh, over-month. :) Good luck. --Xymph (talk) 07:58, 29 April 2021 (CDT)

Why dont i test broken links?
Because i forgot. That's why :p. Im always trying to improve, but i can't deny i love iterating. (He said so jokingly.). Real reason: being tired. As soon as i had the GLDoom idea out in writing, i was done.
 * Alllright. :) --Xymph (talk) 01:41, 8 May 2021 (CDT)

megaarmor map 32 doom zero
hey, on my doom zero v 2.2, i can see three secrets on this map. i listed the third one, but you removed it and put 2 back. i'm confused why you did that? thanks.
 * Because until today, nobody on the wiki mentioned newer DZ releases had been made, so you can find the reason for the reversal in the history: v1.8 (on which the statistics section was based) didn't have that megaarmor yet.
 * For v2.2, all secret lists, statistics and map views needed checking and (frequently) updating, that has now been completed, and new/updated secrets for all pertaining maps can be described. --Xymph (talk) 13:56, 20 May 2021 (CDT)


 * Thank you!

Texture/palette automation
Just as a heads up: I appreciate all the work you have done writing scripts and the like for listing textures and what not. Your dedication to stats-producing and collecting programs and efforts is humbling. Thank you Xymph for everything. --Redneckerz (talk) 10:47, 30 May 2021 (CDT)
 * My pleasure. No, really. :) And conversely, I appreciate all the work you put in source port/mod/hack articles and the like. That area of the wiki has really expanded and improved through your efforts. --Xymph (talk) 15:34, 30 May 2021 (CDT)
 * Whoops, didn't get notified. I know you like this Xymph, and the pleasure is all mines equally so :) To the next milestone we go. --Redneckerz (talk) 14:59, 6 June 2021 (CDT)
 * One only gets notified about an edit on one's own talk page, not an edit to another user's page that may or may not be a reply to your edit over there. --Xymph (talk) 15:13, 6 June 2021 (CDT)

Latest soundtrack edit of 'Valiant' article from June 5th 2021
Good day!

I noticed that part of my edits are pending review. About the additional info concerning Stuart Rynn midis: i reached out to Stuart Rynn yesterday on Doomworld.com and asked him about these four tracks and when he made them. The information i added about these tracks was taken from the answer he sent me.

I don't think i can upload a png of it to this wiki and the conversation is in my Inbox on Doomworld, so i couldn't link it, either.


 * Hi, your June 5 edit was approved and improved, and while adding further info today was fine, re-duplicating wikilinks wasn't. I've reverted that again. --Xymph (talk) 14:08, 6 June 2021 (CDT)

Person article request(?)
Hi, Xymph, I've been thinking about getting a Doom wiki page of my own set up (as part of the Mappers categories), for portfolio purposes and all. I've only been doing small edits to pages every now and then so I'm unsure if I'll be able to create the article and get things set up properly (organizing, formatting, categorizing, etc). I read through the criteria for people articles; still on the fence as I haven't created an article before, but I can write down the information and make updates. I do have a wix-site with plenty of info and all the contributions I've made, if it will help. https://kdj73883.wixsite.com/keagandunn/doom Just asking for your input on this and if it's worth making, as I'm someone with little wiki-editing experience but would like to get a portfolio of my Doom-related contributions on here. Thanks in advance. --Dunn & Dunn


 * Skeleton done. --Xymph (talk) 07:20, 11 July 2021 (CDT)

Thanks for your hard work
Just want to thank you for your hard work on this wiki. It's been a valuable reference for me, especially your bot providing the enemy stats for so many levels. (And I didn't realize it was a bot doing it until today, when I noticed all the Doom 404 level articles were populated, just a day after the article's creation. Very cool.) --76.240.46.216 10:54, 10 November 2021 (CST)


 * That's been going on for merely five years ;-) but indeed not so visible because one needs to click "Show bots" in Recent Changes to see those edits. Thanks for the kind words. --Xymph (talk) 10:58, 10 November 2021 (CST)


 * I've been playing (and recently watching lots of demos) classic Doom for much less than that :) This wiki is very helpful for curious folks like me. And I mention the enemy stats because one quickly learns that Pwad difficulty varies greatly. --76.240.46.216 11:15, 10 November 2021 (CST)

Hexen Mac demo maps
Maps 1 and 4 are fully functional in the program they're made for, but not anything else I know of. I can try and record a video if necessary. - SiFi270 (talk) 10:30, 31 December 2021 (CST)


 * That doesn't seem supported by the reference linked: "A lot of lumps are far too small (4 bytes or less) to actually contain anything useful. MAP01 and MAP04 are made unplayable this way." I interpreted that as the lumps belonging to those two MAPs themselves being too small to be meaningful. If they are, in fact, proper maps playable only in the Mac demo itself, then the wording should make that clearer (I modified your edit because it wasn't clear enough, to me anyway). --Xymph (talk) 10:42, 31 December 2021 (CST)
 * I honestly have no recollection of what I did or didn't do back then. It's certainly possible the code I used to extract stuff was flawed and failed on these two maps. --Gez (talk) 05:42, 9 January 2022 (CST)
 * Could you re-check and update the relevant section if necessary? I don't have time for this, nor the tooling. --Xymph (talk) 06:12, 9 January 2022 (CST)

Yet another bot suggestion
Would it be feasible to automatically look at a wad's Soundtrack section, and then edit accordingly the and uses the music track " " part of the corresponding map's skeleton? There's certainly a fair few cases to take into account (e.g. if it starts with "MIDI version of " proper grammar would require a formulation like "and uses as music track a MIDI version of ") and I'm sure there's gonna be several caveats discovered due to the lack of complete consistency in these sections. Also things like REKKR or BTSX may cause confusions due to having several identical map lumps. But since generally soundtrack information focuses on a wad's main page and forgets about the map pages, that could, if possible, cut down on tedious busy work to copy-paste information from one page to another. --Gez (talk) 05:42, 9 January 2022 (CST),.
 * Have pondered that a few times over the years, but "the lack of complete consistency" is exactly why I see this as unfeasible. Not just the variety of formatting styles but also the links (internal and to Wikipedia, both game titles and music artists/songs) that would need to be processed, make it an insurmountable task for me. And time-wise that doesn't even take my ballooning to-do list into account, both in covering the recent flood of new WADs and custom things lists for existing ones, as well as the DSDA demos tables still to be updated for many dozens of megawads (and then cleaning remnant linking to old DSDA). I'm longing for the summer doldrums already. ;-) --Xymph (talk) 05:54, 9 January 2022 (CST)
 * Fair enough. Alternative suggestion: have the map skeleton be something like  so that would give a handy way to check manually which map articles need to be updated. --Gez (talk) 06:59, 9 January 2022 (CST)
 * Good idea, added to templates for future skeletons. Except that should be to fit into the  hierarchy. Updating existing articles will take some additional scripting and a very long bot run. Please create the category. --Xymph (talk) 08:01, 9 January 2022 (CST)