The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.
Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2017 8:21 pm
I am starting to get a few questions about what the future holds for zdoom.org and its child projects.
A few of you seem to think that GZDoom and QZDoom development and discussion should be more active here, rather than on DRD Team. A "merge" - so to speak. Well - I don't think a merge per se, is appropriate, but if it becomes necessary I can open up subforums to segregate GZDoom and QZDoom discussion. I do not feel that will be necessary - we can use the General forum just as we always have. It may no longer be necessary to keep their counterpart DRD Team subforums open, and I have not yet decided exactly what I am going to do with those. Ultimately, however, their portal pages will still be hosted on DRD Team because I see no reason to move them, but pertinent announcements about them can certainly be made here. No matter what, I am not going to delete entire subforums - so DRD Team is not going to lose its post history - if anything does happen to them, the worst will be that the forums will simply be locked and archived so they can be referenced and looked upon later.
As for the forum staff - there's absolutely no reason to change them. They've done a fantastic job, up to this point, and I have no intention of interfering with them. I don't think new moderators are necessary, and I will most likely follow the advice of Wildweasel closely about that if he has any concerns or if he does need extra help - right now, I consider him a far more experienced moderator than I and I think he's far more in tune with this community's needs.
Up to this point, development of GZDoom and QZDoom have been full speed ahead - with no stopping. dpJudas and Graf Zahl are doing a great job (and yes, I pitch in occasionally when I can. ). The ZDoom legacy will live on! Zandronum is presently trying to adopt ZScript into the fold, itself, so it might not be long before we start seeing multiplayer support for it. Hopefully, this also means they will be able to keep up more with GZDoom - this itself will be quite exciting, I am sure, for many Zandronum users.
The developer forums (Bugs/Features/etc) will slowly be closed out as we transition to MantisBT for both GZDoom and QZDoom. After that happens, they will be kept in a locked and archived state - just like how DRD Team did it with its old hosted sites. After that point, we will be using the trackers exclusively for bugs and features.
As for the site itself - eventually it will have to be moved into MancuNET. When that happens, I will try and make the transition happen overnight when relatively few people are on the forum. I will try to work with Manc about that to work out the exact details, but there is currently no timetable for that happening.
Just think of where we are now, though - in a single year, we've gotten ZScript, a true-color software renderer (with dynamic lights!), a triangle software renderer, and ZDoom as well as its child projects are better than they ever were before.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this thread and they will be answered as appropriate.
A few of you seem to think that GZDoom and QZDoom development and discussion should be more active here, rather than on DRD Team. A "merge" - so to speak. Well - I don't think a merge per se, is appropriate, but if it becomes necessary I can open up subforums to segregate GZDoom and QZDoom discussion. I do not feel that will be necessary - we can use the General forum just as we always have. It may no longer be necessary to keep their counterpart DRD Team subforums open, and I have not yet decided exactly what I am going to do with those. Ultimately, however, their portal pages will still be hosted on DRD Team because I see no reason to move them, but pertinent announcements about them can certainly be made here. No matter what, I am not going to delete entire subforums - so DRD Team is not going to lose its post history - if anything does happen to them, the worst will be that the forums will simply be locked and archived so they can be referenced and looked upon later.
As for the forum staff - there's absolutely no reason to change them. They've done a fantastic job, up to this point, and I have no intention of interfering with them. I don't think new moderators are necessary, and I will most likely follow the advice of Wildweasel closely about that if he has any concerns or if he does need extra help - right now, I consider him a far more experienced moderator than I and I think he's far more in tune with this community's needs.
Up to this point, development of GZDoom and QZDoom have been full speed ahead - with no stopping. dpJudas and Graf Zahl are doing a great job (and yes, I pitch in occasionally when I can. ). The ZDoom legacy will live on! Zandronum is presently trying to adopt ZScript into the fold, itself, so it might not be long before we start seeing multiplayer support for it. Hopefully, this also means they will be able to keep up more with GZDoom - this itself will be quite exciting, I am sure, for many Zandronum users.
The developer forums (Bugs/Features/etc) will slowly be closed out as we transition to MantisBT for both GZDoom and QZDoom. After that happens, they will be kept in a locked and archived state - just like how DRD Team did it with its old hosted sites. After that point, we will be using the trackers exclusively for bugs and features.
As for the site itself - eventually it will have to be moved into MancuNET. When that happens, I will try and make the transition happen overnight when relatively few people are on the forum. I will try to work with Manc about that to work out the exact details, but there is currently no timetable for that happening.
Just think of where we are now, though - in a single year, we've gotten ZScript, a true-color software renderer (with dynamic lights!), a triangle software renderer, and ZDoom as well as its child projects are better than they ever were before.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this thread and they will be answered as appropriate.