Frans P. de Vries (Xymph)
From DoomWiki.org
Frans P. de Vries (alias Xymph) is a Dutch webmaster, programmer, and system administrator who was an early anchor of the Doom community from its inception in 1993 up to 1999. In 2016 he returned as a Doom Wiki contributor.
For his outstanding contributions to the community, he was the recipient of the Espi Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2022 Cacowards.
Community activities[edit]
Frans was the lead support person in the Usenet rec.games.computer.doom hierarchy of newsgroups and a member of the RGCD Support Team. Aside from answering individual user queries and some administrative duties, he authored the RGCD FAQ and Other 3D Games FAQ to provide answers to commonly asked questions and pointers to further information about Doom-engine and other games.
Frans acted as primary maintainer of the idgames archive from December 1995 to February 1997, and was occasional backup to Ty Halderman during the latter's period as maintainer. On the side, he also administrated the non-Doom related /idgames2 (for Quake) and /unreal archives, and still handles system administration for idgames, the gamers.org server, and all its other gaming archives. In February 2021, he developed the Idgames Upload form to enable uploading files to the archive via the website, after increasing community concerns about FTP access.
He was a major contributor to Hank Leukart's Official Doom FAQ, including its large ASCII logo.
Frans was instrumental in obtaining permission for the initial release of alpha and beta versions of Doom to the idgames archive, where he appears as their uploader.
On Doom Wiki, besides manual contributions, Frans programmed a large number of scripts for his XymphBot account to automatically add and update pages for map series, check and improve consistency of existing map page content, upload map view images, find external links, and perform numerous other tasks.
In December 2021, he launched a small site to illustrate the Growth of the Doom Wiki over its lifetime. And in 2023 he migrated Compet-n to Gamers.org.
Utilities[edit]
Frans is the author of the following editing and source code utilities:
- DooM MaP StaTistics (DMMPST) - Generates statistics (map data, things, appearances) of Doom, Heretic, Hexen and Strife levels, including tables directly suitable for use in Doom Wiki pages.
- DooM INFO.c processors (DMINFO) - Five utilities (DMINFO, 64INFO, HTINFO, HXINFO and SFINFO) compiled against INFO.c to directly extract information from the mobjinfo, state, sprite and sound tables, suitable for filling thing Data tables on Doom Wiki. Also: generate various one-off tables, most notably pain chances and thing types.
- DooM PostScript Maps Utility (DMPSMU) - Allows creation of PostScript files containing the maps of Doom and Heretic levels.
- DooM TeXtures LiSter (DMTXLS) - Generates cross-reference lists of textures and flats used in Doom and Heretic levels.
- LmpStats, a PHP library to collect demo statistics
He also created a Doom-like font for the FIGlet utility, and improved the Omgifol drawmaps.py script.
Other notable activities[edit]
Frans was a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of the now defunct 3dgamers.com (archived 🗺) site which, amongst other titles, had significant coverage of Doom- and Quake-engine games. He was a major contributor to the Wolfenstein 3D & Spear of Destiny FAQ. He is also a programmer, system administrator, and former editor for Blue's News, and a dormant member of the TrackMania community.
External links[edit]
- Frans' Homepage on gamers.org
- Archive of historic RGCD FAQ editions
- History of the DOOM ASCII logo
- Various Doom and Doom Wiki related scripts
- Espi Award dedication
| Maintainer of the idgames archive | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Name | Succeeded by |
| Barry Bloom | Frans P. de Vries | Ty Halderman |
| Joost Schuur | ||
| Jim Pitts | Jeff Makaiwi | |
