Talk:Partial conversion

This is gotta be the oldest page of the Doom Wiki.

somebody should expand upon it. --Chex guy 09:02, December 18, 2009 (UTC)

Not quite the oldest (that would be Entryway :-)

Some of the oldest pages are probably the ones listed here.

But yes, I agree. Fraggle 11:30, December 18, 2009 (UTC)

Seeming redefinition of this

The latest edit seems to try to redefine partial conversion to include something as simple as texture pack usage. I have been in the community since 1997 and have never once heard the term used this way. I think this needs reconsideration. I also do not find the anecdote provided about a specific editor's decision to be either useful to understanding this topic, nor to be encyclopedic in tone. --Quasar (talk) 12:13, 21 December 2021 (CST)

I'm glad you posted this. This topic has been entirely neglected on the wiki until I decided to take a stab at it yesterday. Take, for example, Cringe and Back to Saturn X. What makes them PCs? A custom resource is a custom resource, whether that be textures, sounds, monsters, etc. -PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 12:25, 21 December 2021 (CST)

I would imagine that the reason it's used for BTSX is that it does not use a single texture or flat from vanilla, although I never considered it to be a partial conversion myself, and I wonder where that definition for BTSX came from. --Dynamo128 (talk) 12:33, 21 December 2021 (CST)

Exactly my point. According to current wiki convention (or lack thereof), a map with custom textures is a type of partial conversion. If someone more knowledgable about this stuff wants to sort it all out, that would be good. That's why I intentionally made gameplay mod a new article in case it would make sense to have it as more than a redirect to here. -PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 12:36, 21 December 2021 (CST)

Not commenting on specific mods, but I associate PC with changes in graphics/sounds/behavior (usually at least two of those categories) to some/many of the game's monsters and/or weaponry, more than with a texture pack or modified item/key sprites. In the community from 1993 to 1999 and since 2016, so maybe the community's understanding/definition changed in the mean time. --Xymph (talk) 12:49, 21 December 2021 (CST)

This is my general understanding as well. Though, like many community terms, there is an element of subjectiveness involved and it is related to the scale of the modification in question. --Quasar (talk) 14:11, 21 December 2021 (CST)

It's definitely had a bit of a fluid meaning over time, but the "classic" partial conversion is STRAIN, whereas a total conversion is something like Batman Doom. On the other hand, not once have I ever seen gameplay mods being referred to as total or partial conversions in my years on the ZDoom forums where these are produced, so I'm afraid the way the article has been worded is very much inaccurate with regards to the community's understanding of such terms. BTW; I removed the status of partial conversion from BTSX since it doesn't make sense. Gez was the one who originally added it, so he can feel free to elaborate on it if he wants. --Dynamo128 (talk) 15:40, 21 December 2021 (CST)

I am not Gez, but quoting from the official text files (I prefer to stay neutral, at any rate)...

Get Out Of My Stations is the first episode of Back to Saturn X, a three-episode partial conversion for Doom II.

Tower in the Fountain of Sparks is the second episode of Back to Saturn X, a three-episode partial conversion for Doom II.

https://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/btsx_e1.txt

https://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/btsx_e2.txt

Diabolución (talk) 15:56, 21 December 2021 (CST)

Understandable, but for the record, John Romero called his one-episode-long SIGIL a "megawad", and Shadowman went as far as calling his own 3-map WADs megawads. I think what people call their own projects isn't strictly relevant as a result. :P --Dynamo128 (talk) 07:39, 22 December 2021 (CST)

Since BTSX has a distinct visual style due to replacing all textures and using a different palette, I had no issue with the partial conversion label for them. Since the operating definition back then was "replaces some, but not all, of the resources" and that fit, the comparison with megawads of less than 15 levels does not really apply. --Gez (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2021 (CST)

This has been a fruitful discussion. I took the liberty of rewriting both articles in question with the info here. -PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 16:02, 21 December 2021 (CST)

All I can say is that I'm glad we're not on the Duke3D community, where levelpacks with just a handful of new textures are called total conversions. :P --Dynamo128 (talk) 16:18, 21 December 2021 (CST)

That's hilarious. Or should I say "grooovy" :) -PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 16:27, 21 December 2021 (CST)

I've accepted the current revision as it seems to strike the balance. --Quasar (talk) 01:31, 22 December 2021 (CST)

Thanks -PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 08:20, 22 December 2021 (CST)

Now that the articles are in solid shape, I'm going to look through the PC category to do what Dynamo did for BTSX. At this time, though, one exception is the gameplay mods there because of the need for a new template type, as I requested yesterday. (I'm not interested in mucking with template code.) --PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 08:20, 22 December 2021 (CST)

Just a brief update. Xymph made the new Wad template type = g. Making this specific change to gameplay mod articles will help de-bloat the PC category, so I'll focus on that first. If anyone else wants to do this type of work too, please feel free. --PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 14:52, 22 December 2021 (CST)

Another update. Interesting discussion at Talk:Ultimate Simpsons Doom that directly involves this article. As stated there, I'm just going to focus on clear-cut gameplay mod articles. (That's why I crossed-out stuff above.) --PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 23:50, 22 December 2021 (CST)

Sorry, not trying to discourage you from editing those. I basically contradicted my earlier decision to accept this article w/o realizing it. If you want to proceed with what was decided here, I'm alright with it. --Quasar (talk) 00:01, 23 December 2021 (CST)

No need to apologize. I'm not discouraged, but I honestly don't know enough about this topic. Like I said at the Simpsons page, it would be best if you or someone else with more knowledge could refine it. (I will suggest, though, that this article may benefit from analyzing a few notable cases -- significant PCs and the important factors for why the community accepts them as such.) --PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 00:08, 23 December 2021 (CST)

Agreed, thanks. --Quasar (talk) 00:10, 23 December 2021 (CST)

Another update, hopefully final this time :) So I completed the gameplay mod classifications a little while ago, which pared down the PC category, as I noted above. Then I decided to look at the PC category. Since it had less than 70 articles, and I was familiar with a few of these mapsets that are definitely not PCs (like Cringe and SlayeR) I decided to un-cat the obvious ones. I was on a roll, so it didn't take long to look through most of the others as well. In the process, I realized I could add a paragraph to the article covering the loose use of the term. I also softened some wording of the second paragraph to allow some gray area. I like the result and think it addresses what's been discussed. The PC category now has 60 articles that correspond to what's explained in this article. --PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 22:40, 23 December 2021 (CST)

A total rewrite is in order

Since there are still significant issues with this article, I am doing a total rewrite. The main issue appears to be the shifting definitions of Total Conversions and Partial Conversions over time, leading to the current undefinable mess. This very wiki considers STRAIN to be a partial conversion while the developers considered it a total conversion (quoting their own web site: "the greatest TC ever made"), so even notable WADs in the community are not well defined. ConSiGno (talk) 16:53, 24 January 2022 (CST)

The STRAIN devs calling it a TC is akin to the BTSX case in the article (which is based on the discussion above). Like Dynamo128 stated above, just because the devs labeled it, doesn't necessarily make it so. Nowadays, STRAIN is a Partial because it's a variant of Doom, not a distinctly different game (like Aliens TC or Batman Doom). So I don't see how a full rewrite is in order. I will restate the STRAIN sentence, instead citing it as an early example of a PC. (And for the record, STRAIN has always been classified as a Partial in the wiki, since the earliest version from 2007.) --PhilthyPhilistine (talk) 18:44, 24 January 2022 (CST)

The issues arise when we (the Wiki) start defining WADs as PCs or TCs with no historical evidence. While "you know it when you see it" is still good rule of thumb here, we already know of exceptions to this rule historically. If the wad was considered a TC or PC, we need to document that. Else, we're speaking from a position of authority we do not have. ConSiGno (talk) 16:06, 16 February 2022 (CST)