ZDoom 2.3.0 released

[randi]

After more than a year of waiting, ZDoom has been updated to version 2.3.0. Since a lot has gone on since 2.2.0, I'm not too sure what to highlight in this news post. So here is just a quick list off the top of my head:

• Improved performance on intensive maps.
• New and improved sound system supporting reverb effects on all sound cards, not just Creative Labs'.
• SPC is now a first-class music format that no longer requires an external DLL to play.
• Supports the UDMF map format.
• Text-based texture definition format.
• Supports Vavoom's vertex height things.
• Supports Eterity's 3DMIDTEX lines.
• Supports linked sectors, to ensure that multiple sectors can move consistently in sync.
• More compatibility options, and automatic selection of those options for selected maps that require them to be playable.
• New DECORATE features, including better error reporting.
• Freedoom, Chex Quest, and Chex Quest 3 are recognized as IWADs and can be selected in the IWAD picker dialog box.
• New ACS features.
• New SBARINFO features.
• Various and sundry bug fixes.

See comments for more.

[Captain Ventris]

......................I love you.

[lizardcommando]

I didn't see this coming. At least, not this soon... Cool.

[Graf Zahl]

Not? Everybody else was merely waiting. The new release has been planned for weeks but delayed due to some SVN server problems and possibly a few other minor things.

[Coon]

This is the first time I don't feel genuinely excited about an official ZDoom release, and I blame that on the svn which kind of takes the novelty out of it, but needless to say, kudos for getting the project this far and giving mappers something to settle for, once again

[Tubers]

At fucking last

[esselfortium]

Vertex slopes!

[Remmirath]

YAY!

Thank you, Randy.

[PlayerLin]

Finally a new official release.

But I still want to use SVN builds...

[Gez]

I went on a wikibinge and removed all {{svn}} tags from features that are no longer svn-only.

If you want a list of new features, you can look at the "recent changes" on the wiki. You'll have to set it to display the last 250 changes if you want to see them all, since there's a bit more than 100 pages modified for this.

And that's just the added features, not the bug fixes.

[Enjay]

Thank you very much to both Randy and Graf. Your work to give us the fantastic port that is Zdoom is very much appreciated.

I expected to wake up this morning and find this news because just before going to bed last night, I checked out the SVN repository and saw an update that said nothing more than "Version bump".

[Graf Zahl]

... and there's already the first post-2.3.0 bugfix but I doubt that this will affect any map in existence.

This one's more critical with 3D floors but the new GZDoom includes that fix already.

[Graf Zahl]

List of major new features (by no means complete):

New features:

• - Zdoom uses CMake for building on Linux now.
  - Full support of Chex Quest and Chex Quest 3 as IWADs.
  - UDMF map format support
  - new MAPINFO format for robustness and compatibility.
  - text based texture definition format
  - Strife dialogs work in multiplayer
  - option to make decorations shoot through like in Doom.exe.
  - garbage collector for increased performance on levels that create lots of objects with short lifespans.
  - shorter savegame messages are back, now as an option
  - lots of new SBARINFO features
  - Sound code uses FModEx now
  - Sound reverb effects no longer require EAX and work everywhere.
  - built in SPC music playback without SNESAPU.DLL
  - Support for Vavoom's vertex height things.
  - Support for Eternity's 3DMIDTEX lines (solid mid textures you can walk on)
  - Linedef type translation maps can now be edited as text files and specified in MAPINFO.
  - The 2 different crushing modes (Doom and Hexen) are now selectable per action.
  - Linked sectors. You only start an action on the master sector and all sectors linked to it will move synchronously.
  - Separate scrolling of the 3 different textures on a sidedef.
  - more flexible use of lightning in a map.
  - ClassifyActor() ACS function to get some information about an actor's type.
  - Automatic compatibility settings for some older maps that need them.
  - Dehacked music name replacement option has been restored.

New DECORATE features:

• - all internal actors have been converted to DECORATE.
  - extensive restructuring and rewrites of DECORATE parser for robustness and better error reporting.
  - customizable pickup flash
  - enhanced morphing features
  - Random spawner objects and customizable boss brains.
  - proper weapon setup can be done without KEYCONF

[CodeImp]

Cheers! good stuff!

[Rachael]

Woohoo! Yes, we were waiting for this, because now most of our in-development projects will work on an official ZDoom release, instead of having everyone use the SVN. ^^ Kudos!