ZDoom

Happened to come across the Caco17 Lifetime Achievement tribute to Marisa Heit earlier today. As someone who first played classic Doom about 12 months ago (on GZ of course), I was previously unaware of it. So I decided to post it here to help others like me get more appreciation for the hard work and attention to detail that Heit and others did on ZDoom long ago, the fruits of which all of us on GZDoom or other descendents continue to benefit from.

I especially liked this passage:

Why, then, was ZDoom such a big deal? As if it being such a long-running project wasn't already something to be proud of, how did it become the de facto favorite among the legions of other Doom source ports available? I'd argue it's the sheer amount of options and capabilities. ZDoom hasn't always had the biggest feature list in the community, but its advances tended to come at the right time, and many of them were tied strongly to enhancing the quality of life for its players. Even as long ago as 1999's ZDoom 1.22, the port already ran in most varieties of Windows including NT, supported high resolutions and mouse look (already putting it several steps above Doom95), native support for DeHackEd patches (and their Boom-extended brethren), mixed-platform multiplayer, and a Quake 2-esque console. And that's to say nothing of its staggering amount of editing features, many of which were used liberally by authors like Kurt Kesler and Rex Claussen. I emphasize, this was back in 1999. The Doom source code had only been available for two years. And the train would only keep on rolling.

Just think, what would classic Doom gameplay be like without the console or other important features?

So thank you Heit, Graf, Rachael, WildWeasel, and everyone else that have kept the train rolling all these years.

That was very much a well deserved award. Without Marisa's work (and continued support in the background) for so many years, none of us would be here and the source port that we know and love, and which is now forming the basis of so many new and interesting games and projects, wouldn't exist. It is also a very nicely written article that captures so much of what I too feel about Marisa and ZDoom.

I am hugely grateful to Marisa for ZDoom and the many, many years of work that went into it and, of course, to Graf for picking up the baton, running with it and taking GZDoom so much further than any of us could have imagined back in "the notgod days". These days, GZDoom has a much more collaborative element to it and I am also hugely thankful to all who contribute both to the game itself and the community that has built up around it.

I have spent countless hours, days, weeks, months and years of my life on this hobby and it is the contributions of so many people (many of the key players have already been mentioned in the OP, but there are many more too) that have made this possible and fun. There aren't many hobbies that have this kind of longevity and the fact that, most days, I still log on here and am interested and enjoy reading and contributing to the forums as well as editing and playing the game is testament to ZDoom, the people who make it possible and the associated community.

Marisa is one one of the ''greats'' when it comes to Doom History. The legacy introduced by ZDoom cannot be understated, and today, is perhaps more popular than ever - There are dozens of standalone games released or in development that run on ZDoom tech.

Graf Zahl's GZDoom is in turn the natural evolution - and perhaps he one day gets a Cacoward aswell, as it would be for much of the same reasons.

GZ remains my general port of choice for playing, irregardless of many other ports. The codebase has also been unusually sturdy; I have ran several source modifications of ZDoom 1.22, over 20 years of legacy code and it still ran well even in Windows 10. That is very awesome indeed.

What's more, ZDoom and GZ power so many sub-forks/ports well into 2021, its a lasting legacy.

A very big slice of the Doom pie, this one incorporates.