What were the first new additions that ZDoom added?

olzhas1one · Post by **olzhas1one** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 2:23 pm

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the first version of ZDoom came out in 1998 (correct me if I'm wrong)

What were the first features/additions it added?
What features were removed, if any?
Did these features change over time?

While this is a bit heading offtopic, but what where the first features/additions that ZDoom brought that have changed Doom modding forever? I like to find out about history of things and I might as well ask this.

Post by **Gez** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 3:40 pm

Well, you can read through the wiki article for [wiki]ZDoom version history[/wiki]. I'd say that 1.16 is the first version that "changed Doom modding forever" by introducing ACS to Doom maps. This is the first thing that led to ZDoom maps being radically different from "normal" vanilla or Boom maps, scripted events.

The next major step would be 2.0 beta 13, with the introduction of the first version of DECORATE. While it was still incredibly limited (it might make more sense to count instead 2.0.63, which is when DECORATE started being able to handle custom monsters), it was the first step on what would become the other major defining feature of ZDoom maps, custom actors.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 3:41 pm

You forgot slopes which came in-between.
They were also a radical departure from classic Doom maps.

leileilol · Post by **leileilol** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 5:46 pm

Probably the very first thing Zdoom had to do was to work in DOS

The Doom linux source required a lot of reimplementations of what Doom originally had and no port was in full feature parity for many years.

There's also other ports with design influences at the time (Legacy, DOSDoom, Boom) leading to ugly 15bpp translucency, allegro sound, skins, unnecessarily translucent lost souls, etc.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Thu Aug 01, 2019 12:47 pm

IIRC ZDoom went for Windows right away, quite unlike most other ports.
Regarding your other points, 15bpp translucency was done for performance. Back in the day using anything that cannot be done with a single lookup into a small table was suicide.
Allegro was pretty much the only usable sound library back then. At least ZDoom never went the cheap route of most other ports and fed the original mixer's output to an SDL stream - something that sill limits their sound capabilities today.
On the other hand, the less said about translucent Lost Souls, the better.At least Randi made it an option. If it hadn't been there for 20 years it'd be on the chopping block - I consider it a pointless gimmick.

ZDoom