by Graf Zahl » Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:14 pm
My vision of GZDoom's feature means eventual removal of all backends aside from Vulkan.
Remember: This currently would mean serving 85% of the existing users, and those last 15% will only decline as time goes on - especially now with Windows 11 on the horizon, I'd expect it to accelerate.
Our current hardware support means that the most recent hardware that is not supported fully is the Intel HD3000 from 2011. And the most recent discrete graphics cards no longer supported are from 2005/2006! Do we really need those last few users on hardware so old that it's a miracle it still works? Once we got support in, the code needs to be maintained. I won't do it.
Even with the GLES backend I only see it as something temporary that will eventually fall off the support roster once mobile GPUs stop being shit. THe entire thing is very unconductive toward new feature implementations and will very likely be treated as thre ugly step child nobody likes but has to treat nicely. Much the same for Softpoly. It's also some heavy Millstone around the neck that complicates matters for very little gain. It is fine for presenting the software renderer's output, but again we got a full additional backend just for a single percent of users.
If this trend of adding even more dead end support continues I may just consider forking the project, clean out the cruft and do a forward looking port unencumbered by the needs of dying hardware.