Important announcement regarding my involvement with ZDoom

[Graf Zahl]

Yesterday something happened that came as no real surprise but nevertheless found an incredible disappointment and made me seriously reconsider my involvement in ZDoom's development.

Randy closed 2 threads in feature request without even the barest acknowledgement of what was going on:

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=19551
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=20122

Personally I think this is inexcusable. The GPL thread didn't get anything. It was closed without comment. The other one had a discussion about a DECORATE replacement but the bottom line of Randy's reason was 'what we have is good enough.' - not even bothering to acknowledge the ongoing discussion.

I had to sleep a night over Randy's reaction to this thread but now that I was able to think about it and also saw that there was still no proper response to both threads, here's what I have to say:

I think it's speaking volumes that Randy moved these threads without even a hint of acknowledgement and I am ready to take the consequences.

For 1.5 years now I have been toying with a scripting language for ZDoom but all I got was a short notice to 'please not include it in ZDoom' right away. Since then: Nothing! No matter what I said, I got no proper response from the one person whose opinion I would have liked to hear most. Not a single word of acknowledgement in this type of threads. I still have no fucking idea where I stand with this. Of course there hasn't also been a hint of progress on these developments from Randy himself.

Enough is enough. I held out so long for the respect of the community who would be the victim if I decided to part ways. But this has gone to the point where the frustration for me outweighs the fun doing this stuff.

The lack of comments on this type of stuff is one thing but I find it equally problematic that Randy couldn't be bothered to maintain the Feature Suggestions forum from the start. It was almost always me who had to comment or discuss these things.

And of course there's the ridiculous release schedule with up to 1.5 years between official versions. Features are collecting dust and if I hadn't released interim GZDoom versions they'd be forgotten at the time when they become official.

I think it's obvious where this is going. For me the fun to work on ZDoom is almost completely gone because it doesn't let me do the things I'd like to do anymore. So effective immediately I will stop all contributions to ZDoom and concentrate on the things I have been planning in GZDoom for a long time but held them off because I didn't want to compromise on compatibility.

I have no idea how this will affect the future of both ZDoom and GZDoom but at this point I don't care anymore. Only time will tell who was right. But I would have hoped it wouldn't have come to that.

Hey, this isn't even Doomscript. Just a slightly modified DECORATE format whose whole point would be the ability to further expand it without compromising stability until DoomScript arrives. And the work is (mostly) done.

But it's never going to be thoroughly tested, bugfixed and finalised because it's never going to be added. Meaning this was merely an exercise in wasting time. Cue cricket chirping and Godot references. (I could have used Daudet's Girl from Arles as well but it's much more obscure. She's talked about during the whole play, but like Godot she's never seen.)

It's sad that you were promptly proven correct - at least as far as ZDoom is concerned.

[Kinsie]

Countdown 'til Randy closes this...

[Michi]

Let him! I'll bet if he treats this in the same dismissive manner as everything else that has been going on here, Graf will be gone for good and nothing may persuade him to reconsider.

[Kinsie]

But in all seriousness this is why, when multiple people are working on something, they fucking communicate! You two were just basically doing your own thing separately from the looks of things, and as we can see that's about to turn out magnificently.

[Skippy]

@Kinsie: Graf can hardly be blamed for this (not that I'm suggesting you're doing so) - although us non-devs have no idea what goes on behind the scenes, Graf has been quite publicly vocal about his frustrated intentions for the longest time now. It is certainly not how I'd hoped it would turn out, but on the other hand I've always felt that since Graf, as mentioned, is the sole real maintainer of Feature Requests, he should have bit the bullet and forked the source years ago. He held back from doing so out of respect for the community and I have the utmost admiration for him as a result - but it's time to move on.

Let's not demonize Randy though - after all, he's the very foundation on which not one, not two, but three separate source ports (at least) are built. I hope that, once he sees the fantastic things Graf is achieving with GZDoom, he'll get back on board and dovetail the two ports as much as possible. So it's a testing time for the devs, but an exciting one for the community as a whole, and we should support both Randy and Graf to the best of our ability.

[Kinsie]

I'm not suggesting that Graf is at fault, I'm... well, mostly I'm just annoyed that I'm going to have to learn GZDoomScript now that it actually has a chance of happening

[Michi]

GZDoomScript

Don't you think it needs a nicer name? Considering how long we all have been waiting, how about 'Godot'?

[Gez]

GZDoomScript

Don't you think it needs a nicer name? Considering how long we all have been waiting, how about 'Godot'?

It's been suggested a few times to use this name...

But more seriously, GZSCRIPT would make a nice, unique lump name.

[Enjay]

Skippy's post is a good one.



Sad that it has to come to this. I seems like it should have been utterly avoidable - but I think we all saw it coming.

Interesting times ahead though probably.

[Nash]

I fully support the split in the name of development. I don't see why GZDoom has to remain compatible with ZDoom. I treat them as two separate programs. Just like how I treat ZDoom, Vavoom, Doomsday, PrBoom - all different programs. When I play a port-specific project, I don't expect it to be cross compatible at all.

For example, there are some very impressive JDoom and Vavoom projects out there, but I don't whine "waaa why won't ZDoom load them". I play them in their intended port (no matter how much I dislike the port).

As it is, I've been playing less and less ZDoom on my new computer due to the fact that playing it with vsync causes horrible input lag for me...

I still love ZDoom (it's why I'm here in the first place) but it just has been too long a wait... next year will be the tenth year since Doomscript was announced... I've been using ZDoom since 2001 so that's 7 years of waiting for me - that's a VERY long time.

[Blzut3]

The GPL thread didn't get anything. It was closed without comment.

Does this mean anything in the way of GZDoom being able to go GPL?

[bagheadspidey]

Graf Zahl wrote:The GPL thread didn't get anything. It was closed without comment.

Does this mean anything in the way of GZDoom being able to go GPL?

I doubt it. Zlib license is gpl compatible, so if the openal stuff Chris wrote makes it into gzdoom (I patched my copy of gzdoom with his patch; it worked fine) and the rest of the raven code can be replaced, I see no reason gzdoom couldn't be GPLed.

As far as this split thing goes, I think it might be a good thing for development on both sides. Graf can do new decorate formats and create new scripting layers without having to answer to anyone, and Randy can do whatever it is he's doing. After a while when both sides have come up with new features that would make sense in the other port, those features will likely get ported over.

Now that gzdoom compiles in linux, I'm happy enough to use it in software mode instead of zdoom. I just hope some mappers will not forget that some of us genuinely prefer software mode to opengl; please don't forget about us ;)

[Wills]

I'm afraid to say I've lost my faith in randy; not telling your users what you're doing, if anything, is not good for anyone involved, especially for the mappers who must deal with outdated/broken code and come up with hacks for useful ideas that have yet to be implemented properly. If Graf decides to develop GZDoom independently then I would definitely switch to an engine that's actually being kept up and improved.

[Csonicgo]

Well, this is quite a shite in the hat.

But I wouldn't let you guy's friendship sour over this. Lots of projects fork, and with GZDoom it was only a matter of time.

[skadoomer]

This sin't the first time this has happened. Graf "quit" a few time before (or at least stop working in protest) to various feature adds and lack of updates. Its kinda sad that in the three years I've watched the two of you contribute, graf has been the lifeblood we associate with new features while randy handles the technical tweaks and massive updates (at least, he used to).

I do miss the days where like Christmas, new features are added to zdoom "just because" (like the titlemap thing). I hope that this means that both parties get what they want out of this and that some form of compatibility can be maintained between the two. I'll echo the previous statements and support both randy and graf though this.