Why are ZDoom and GZDoom still separate ports?

[Xaser]

Serious question. No really.

Though I suppose the obvious (and likely correct) answer is "because they're maintained by different people," I'm genuinely curious to know: what in particular would prevent the two ports from properly merging into one? From a naive point of view, it seems that GZDoom is "just" (there's that word...) a superset of ZDoom, so more specifically, what is it that makes GZDoom-with-Software-Renderer different from "vanilla" ZDoom?

Bit of a naive question, I'm sure, but I figure subtle nuances exist somewhere. Not suggesting they actually merge either -- just curious about the topic since the thought came to mind.

[GooberMan]

"Sloped 3D surfaces and dynamic lights" immediately come to mind as things that don't have a software counterpart.

[Graf Zahl]

Serious question. No really.

It ultimately boils down to one simple thing: I fundamentally do not agree with Randi's release schedule for ZDoom and won't let myself depend on it.

[mallo]

There is one?

[Nash]

Besides, keeping GZDoom separate would open the possibility of completely removing the software renderer (for several valid reasons; to solve licensing issues, to clean up the codebase, for teh lulz, whatever) should one day that needs to be done...

[Peter Bark]

Zandronum is able to balance the 2 though.

[The Zombie Killer]

Zandronum does the same thing GZDoom does, it has the software renderer and the GL renderer, and it is switched with the vid_renderer command.

This thread is about ZDoom and GZDoom being separate, not a different port

[Athel]

I'm curious 'bout something:

What is the difference between ZDoom, GZDoom and ZDoomGL?

(I'm starting to become a bit active on these forums...)

[Caligari87]

ZDoom is the original, and the base for the other two. Most features start here and propagate outward.

ZDoomGL is an early attempt to bring modern rendering to the ZDoom engine. I don't know if it's still updated or not, and I honestly wasn't very impressed with it about six years ago.

GZDoom is what I'd consider the current "gold standard" for a Doom engine in terms of features/graphics, and has been consistently kept up to date with ZDoom's feature set.

[Dark-Assassin]

I think in terms of graphics, Doomsday and Vavoom overtakes GZDoom in some aspects.

[Caligari87]

On a technical level, possibly. Unfortunately I can never get over the subtle feeling of "wrong and ugly" whenever I've tried to play them, but YMMV.

[Graf Zahl]

ZDoomGL is an early attempt to bring modern rendering to the ZDoom engine. I don't know if it's still updated or not, and I honestly wasn't very impressed with it about six years ago.

There were 2 ZDoomGLs.

The first one had a lot of eye candy but overall was an unstable mess that crashed more often than not.

The second one was more stable but also had its share of problems. It has basically no handling for render hacks and on top of that was slow - not as bad as Doomsday but totally unusable on larger Boom maps like P:AR.

And here's one thing I never understood: Most GL ports created specuial 'GL-optimized' data structures for the levels and still ended up magnitudes slower than GZDoom and PrBoom which use the play engine's data directly. I never found out what precisely made ZDoomGL perform so badly.

[Naitguolf]

On a technical level, possibly. Unfortunately I can never get over the subtle feeling of "wrong and ugly" whenever I've tried to play them, but YMMV.

Mmm im curious about those differences. I usually played doomsday back when no horrible launcher was done, but then switched to zdoom (that's when when no opengl) because the maps were so great. Is there any comparision screenshots to see those differences between Doomsday and GzDooM? (or differences are mostly gameplay, twacks, etc, othern than decorate, ACS)

[Monsterovich]

I think in terms of graphics, Doomsday and Vavoom overtakes GZDoom in some aspects.

I agree with you. I want to see port like "ZDoomsday", but creator made it the wrong way: JDoom, JHexen... etc, otherwise we could use features from other games as zdoom does.

Also, GLBoom is the fastest OpenGL port.
I made a benchmark on high poly maps (vertex buffers are enabled in both ports)

---

Performance test shows that glboom is 10x faster (!) than GZDoom.

[Graf Zahl]

The differences are mostly the eye candy which Doomsday and Vavoom add to the maps - dynamic lights, lens flares and a few other effects.

GZDoom is far more strictly oriented towards a more 'classic' look. Sure, it also got its eye candy features but they are far more designed for editing than for automatic application to existing maps.

Ultimately it's a matter of taste: What do you want when playing a vanilla map?