The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

[Graf Zahl]

About the name, I personally would prefer being able to name it 'ZDoom 3.0', but of course that's out of my hands so it'll probably just end up GZDoom 3.0.

[Undead]

Does GZDoom follow semantic versioning? Pretty sure it does, just making sure.

[Graf Zahl]

Mostly, but I consider a near total replacement of one important subsystem reason enough for a major bump. Doom by design cannot have 'incompatible API changes'.

[Major Cooke]

QZDoom will either continue or be revived if the need arises. If Graf does merge in all of QZDoom's current features, it can definitely be more of a testbed for ZZYZX's and Major Cooke's more risky things in the future. However, it might be renamed for its new purpose after that point.

If I even do such a thing. Chances are I won't because so much has changed, it's left me dazed and confused so I've pretty much stopped trying for right now. Not to mention I don't have time because of college...

[Doom Juan]

This is just my opinion, but I think it would be cool if zdoom.org became the hub for all things ZDoom. GZDoom, QZDoom, Zandronum all represented.

THIS.

[Rachael]

What a stickybump! - plans are underway already for the former 3, however the last one is really its own animal and needs its own space.

Additionally, QZDoom will be changing its focus post-1.3 (post GZDoom-2.4). It may become publicly dormant until the netcode changes I have planned start maturing into a more testable state.

[Accensus]

What happened to the site rehaul Torm was working on? I get it that Randi can't be contacted on the issue, so are we gonna continue to function under the ZDoom brand?

[Rachael]

Xaser offered to port the code over to his own mix of PHP and CSS but he gets inundated by work and real life a lot. It hasn't been forgotten about.

Randi is easily reachable. She just chooses not to respond to certain questions - such as continuing under ZDoom's name. That's really a no-go as far as I am concerned and I have made an announcement reflecting such in the dev blog.

GZDoom's next release has been pushed back until next weekend, so hopefully we'll have all our chips lined up and ready by then. But I can't make any promises and I am not going to try and force Xaser to work any harder. I suppose I could try and make more of a concerted effort to help him out, though, but like all systems that are developed by someone else things get complicated very quickly.

[cortlong50]

Randi is easily reachable. She just chooses not to respond to certain questions - such as continuing under ZDoom's name. That's really a no-go as far as I am concerned and I have made an announcement reflecting such in the dev blog.

But I can't make any promises and I am not going to try and force Xaser to work any harder.

So wait...are you for or against continuining under the ZDoom name? To be honest I dig it, and it being kind of the base of everything it shows that we are operating on top of randis hard work. I say stay “ZDoom forums”, plus I’ve noticed it’s become kind of a hub for all the advanced source ports (besides the crazy bastards in the zandornum universe) and I think that kinda lends itself to it being the biggest, most advanced sourceport.

I don’t know where I’m going with that...I say keep it. But I’m just a guy arbitrarily turning knobs in the background.

I also can’t help but laugh thinking about xaser locked in the dark dank ZDoom basement sweating his ass off while you guys are discussing sitting in the break room, drinking coffee and talking about renaming stuff.


Again. I’m just a guy arbitrarily turning knobs, but QZDoom seems like a bit of an oddball offshoot.

I say merge those ASAP (which is what it sounds like you’re trying to do) get all the features so people can choose them through the menus in GZDoom (truecolor, standard software and full ridiculous GZDoom hardware render) and party on. The amount of work that goes into making that happen...I’m sure I don’t understand. But form a consumer point of view that would be the best thing. All these sub-ports that keep popping up and weirding me out.

Also. I know I’ve complained before but I’ll do it again...adding a ton of new features is nice...but things are getting a little ahead of themselves as every new version I notice a dip in performance. I pointed out a portal issue recently and have been wondering if performance is still at the front of everyone’s mind. I siill play on 3.0.0 to mitigate slow downs.


Also I see a ton of suggestions that say really oddball things that are very NOT doom related or could potentially break the entire foundation of the engine/game itself. And Graf said “The old code needs to remain because it's what makes Doom.”. It’s good seeing a community that knows at the end of the day...we are playing doom. The people that want to destroy 20 years worth of mods/wads/and good times do they can merge zandronum and have specular maps kinda don’t seem to understand what this community is all about. I love being confined to the parameters of a 20 year old game and expanding on that. As opposed to housing a 20 year old game in an unstable mess where you can build anything and everything and it stops feeling like doom. Even the difference between playing 3dge and ZDoom is noticeable. No offense to any of their hard work but it feels emulated as opposed to recreated on 3dge.

I would like seeing more focus on GPL and FOSS usage (because frankly some of the stuff I’ve seen here could go on to be actual commercial projects.) Which by the sounds of it is in the backs of devs minds. So that’s good.

And. My novel is done. Whew.

[Gez]

Your intervention lacks timeliness, I'm sorry to say.

[cortlong50]

Your intervention lacks timeliness, I'm sorry to say.

If that’s directed at me...I’m the master of timelessness-lessness

[Kinsie]

Your intervention lacks timeliness, I'm sorry to say.

If that’s directed at me...I’m the master of timelessness-lessness

He's saying your post was a full year after Rachael's.

Again. I’m just a guy arbitrarily turning knobs, but QZDoom seems like a bit of an oddball offshoot.

I say merge those ASAP (which is what it sounds like you’re trying to do) get all the features so people can choose them through the menus in GZDoom (truecolor, standard software and full ridiculous GZDoom hardware render) and party on. The amount of work that goes into making that happen...I’m sure I don’t understand. But form a consumer point of view that would be the best thing. All these sub-ports that keep popping up and weirding me out.

QZDoom is for things that are too experimental and invasive to be added to the main codebase without ruining multiple people's days. They get merged into GZDoom once they've solidified and are less likely to change dramatically in ways that break things for people using those features.

The people that want to destroy 20 years worth of mods/wads/and good times do they can merge zandronum and have specular maps kinda don’t seem to understand what this community is all about.

The lack of a Zandronum "merge" is very much a technical matter, as the Zandronum netcode is fairly invasively twisted throughout parts of the engine that it probably shouldn't be. There are long-term plans to rewrite GZDoom's netcode (as Rachael mentioned above, a year ago) in a way that will probably, if the best laid plans of mice and men don't go astray, functionally resemble Zandro on the surface. What this means for that source port is unknown at this point, but I believe the plan is to try and preserve that community as best as possible.

As for the PBR stuff... well, we'll see how that shakes out. Personally, I suspect there will be a bunch of "HEY LOOK AT THIS NEW TOY I GOT" tech demos and maybe one released project that actually uses it effectively. I don't think you need to worry too much about every Brutal Doom fork suddenly looking like My First Unreal Engine 4 game, as implementing it in a mod looks like a huge pain in the butt.

[cortlong50]

How the hell do I always do this? At least I got the month right.
(Weasel. If you have to drop me into useless bumps. Be gentle.)

Ahh gotcha. I was always under the impression that QZDoom was a true color software port. I literally don’t play anything other than GZDoom after messing with every other port and deciding this was the best.

And yeah I totally understand the xandornum condundum (see what I did?). There’s obviously a pretty big hurdle to jump when you’re talking about sending that much info that quickly online when zandronum already works perfectly well. If it ain’t broken.

I’d love to see PBR used on flats and textures. But models I don’t really care about anyway. But I remember seeing duke with specular maps and bump maps and lost my shit. So it would be cool to see that kind of thing in GZDoom on flats and stuff as it would be s great way to spice up a room without reflections or any of the super taxing features.


Sorry. Last bump. Kill me quickly.

[Rachael]

It's bumped now and we're having a reasonable and productive conversation - none of this is going to get split off. This is no different than when project threads get bumped, so don't worry about it. Keep discussing it as you please, now.

GZDoom already has QZDoom's software renderer now - truecolour and all. QZDoom is now just for experimental features, like Kinsie said. In fact, recently it was changed to default to the OpenGL renderer like GZDoom does, and the only real difference between it and GZDoom right at this very moment is branding because GZDoom eventually merged everything it originally had.

As for the ZDoom name - no we cannot and will not do that. The ZDoom site is all we have. drfrag has continued zdoom on in various other names but still extend ZDoom itself and are intended to run on older systems. i.e. zdoom32 and ZDoomLE.

[cortlong50]

It’s funny I bumped it and then ran away once the conversation started rolling hahaha

Ahhhh. Okay. That makes way more sense than what I thought it was for. I literally just thought it was a truecolor software renderer. God. Maybe I should read the label on shit. I just run gzdoom (which autocorrects to heroin. So if I say heroin I mean gzdoom)

This is another reason I don’t want to “merge” the communities. Zandronums forums are kinda hostile. Here it’s just nice fellow nerds who take the time to explain stuff. Like it’s well regulated around here.