Switching ZDoom to Eternity's Cardboard renderer

[Marisa the Magician]

Sorry to butt in all of a sudden, but this topic is relevant to my interests. I just got up and I have a terrible headache, so sorry for any sloppy writing.

I've followed the development from ZDoom for a long time now and I'm sad there's always so much conflict even between maintainers. I would talk about the code itself but then I'd go on a tangent about code quality (I can't help it).
I'm sure some might misinterpret this a lot, but GPL licensed code isn't automatically "better". I can say this from experience with a lot of GNU software.
However, I agree that non GPL compatible licensing getting in the way of having an actual better renderer is no "minor issue".

PS: "GPL compatibility" does not necessarily mean using only the GPL. There's a wide variety of licenses that are compatible.

PPS: About the FMOD vs OpenAL thing... I agree with Randi: OpenAL sucks... but so does FMOD too (I have worked with both). The state of "portable" audio APIs is awful, though not as much as the whole oss/alsa/jack/pulse/etc. thing.

[edward850]

OpenAL sucks... but so does FMOD too (I have worked with both).

That's quite the opposite experience reported from other people who have worked with FMOD. Myself included.
It just works. It takes almost no time to fit it into any existing code, and then you can just throw DSPs everywhere at everything and it doesn't even stutter. If that's not everything anyone could ever ask for out of an audio library, I don't know what is.
I tend to hear pretty good things about the FMOD Studio software as well, although I don't have any first hand experience with that.

Although it's not really important anyway, and is once again largely offtopic to the renderer at hand.

[Graf Zahl]

PPS: About the FMOD vs OpenAL thing... I agree with Randi: OpenAL sucks... but so does FMOD too (I have worked with both). The state of "portable" audio APIs is awful, though not as much as the whole oss/alsa/jack/pulse/etc. thing.

I couldn't agree more here. The lack of *good* free libraries for advanced sound is one of the most baffling mysteries in computing. For everything else there's endless solutions available but here: Either use OpenAL with all its oddities or stick to something proprietary.

The clunky API of OpenAL is truly one of the most misguided efforts I have ever seen - making a sound API without callbacks that needs constant polling of all state is sheer idiocy and puts an unnecessary drag on all code having to use it, that's why I showed little interest in doing it myself. As if its makers gobbled up the shittiest parts of OpenGL and threw them at a problem that needs an entirely different approach to be solved. But let's be clear: That stuff is working now, and if it isn't good enough to become the default, 'the API sucks' is not sufficient reason if you ask me.

From a purely technological standpoint FMod is magnitudes better and if there wasn't a licensing issue (and lack of availability on some platforms) the OpenAL code could rot in hell.

About the current state of the backends, yes, the OpenAL backend has some minor differences (e.g. differences with relative music volume), but these could be sorted out eventually.

[Amuscaria]

The effect of ZDoom not being GPL is that a handful of people can't trivially sell their mod?

I have a question now, and probably not too related to the OP. Can one not sell their mod if it requires a port that isn't GPLed? Say someone made a TC from scratch, and the only requirement is that it used Zdoom, is that actually illegal? If it is, it seems akin to Adobe not being able to sell Photoshop, because Windows OS isn't free. Or is that a bit of a naive comparison? Or am I misunderstanding you?

[Arctangent]

The difference between that comparison is that Adobe actually bought or otherwise got the approval to use the Microsoft-sourced code in a commercial way.

With FMod and the Build code, ZDoom doesn't, thus legal action could be taken as you'd be using code you didn't make and didn't get the approval to sell.

[Kinsie]

I have a question now, and probably not too related to the OP. Can one not sell their mod if it requires a port that isn't GPLed? Say someone made a TC from scratch, and the only requirement is that it used Zdoom, is that actually illegal? If it is, it seems akin to Adobe not being able to sell Photoshop, because Windows OS isn't free. Or is that a bit of a naive comparison? Or am I misunderstanding you?

You have no idea what you're talking about.

[Blzut3]

What immediately comes to mind is per-tier colored lighting or sector/wall color transfers similar to light level transfers.

I believe we have the former now via 3D floors although I never bothered to check. Whole wall color is implemented in the Doom 64 branch. IIRC the current color for drawing is just a matter of changing dc_colormap when reading the light level, not a big deal.

(You also got to convince the GPL mafia over at Doomworld that it's super-minor. If you read their discussions sometimes one can get the idea that it's a massive problem... )

I just let them think what they want to think. I personally like watching people think that ZDoom's licensing situation is more complex than it actually is. I suppose it even helps my personal interests since it means Odamex won't touch perfectly usable ZDoom code allowing Zandronum to be even further ahead than it actually has to be.

The only key limitation would be being unable to make a single public commit or build at all with it until permissions could be sorted out.

Just implement it into Gloome. Even with small changes I would think benchmarking could be done within an acceptable margin or error that way.

I've followed the development from ZDoom for a long time now and I'm sad there's always so much conflict even between maintainers.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Randi doesn't want to support OpenAL and if that just means it won't be built officially but we can have it in the repo then there's nothing wrong with that.

an actual better renderer is no "minor issue".

Better in what way? As far as I can tell with ZZYZX's patch the only thing cardboard has over the hacked up original renderer is more precise texture coordinates.

In fact, as far as I can tell if ZZYZX's work pans out as well as it seemed, ZDoom could leap frog EE's portal capabilities.

PS: "GPL compatibility" does not necessarily mean using only the GPL. There's a wide variety of licenses that are compatible.

In the context of this discussion it's GPL only. ZDoom's new code is already BSD licensed and that's apprently not good enough.

I couldn't agree more here. The lack of *good* free libraries for advanced sound is one of the most baffling mysteries in computing. For everything else there's endless solutions available but here: Either use OpenAL with all its oddities or stick to something proprietary.

I would not be surprised if the answer somewhere along the line is "Creative Labs." Pretty much anything that sucks about audio can be traced to some patent they own.

I have a question now, and probably not too related to the OP. Can one not sell their mod if it requires a port that isn't GPLed? Say someone made a TC from scratch, and the only requirement is that it used Zdoom, is that actually illegal? If it is, it seems akin to Adobe not being able to sell Photoshop, because Windows OS isn't free. Or is that a bit of a naive comparison? Or am I misunderstanding you?

This is going to depend on what lawyer you ask, but since I'm not a lawyer the best answer I can give you is no you can't sell a mod that depends on a DSL port. I think I covered this pretty completely in the recent legalities thread. Strictly speaking you can sell the WAD/PK3, that's entirely legal, but if you even so much as provide a download link to ZDoom it could be construed as commercial use of this project. However, with that said no one here has any stake there since the new code is BSD licensed.

[Enjay]

I'm trying to remember how Action Doom II did it (the commercial thing). Wasn't it something along the lines that the game was deemed to be free but you were paying for packaging and additional bonuses such as artwork and so on?

[Amuscaria]

You have no idea what you're talking about.

If I did, I wouldn't be asking.

[Blzut3]

I'm trying to remember how Action Doom II did it (the commercial thing). Wasn't it something along the lines that the game was deemed to be free but you were paying for packaging and additional bonuses such as artwork and so on?

As I covered in the other thread, Urban Brawl most likely violated the license by selling a physical product. Similarly Harmony having a donation button on the page could also be construed as commercial use. It would be dependent on what lawyer you asked. (As always, I am not a lawyer, I just was reading/watching something from a lawyer describing what is defined as commercial use and it's surprisingly broad.) That said I don't think anyone here has a problem with either (I bought a copy myself), and it's certainly not our job to enforce other people's copyrights.

[Kostov]

What difference does FMod and OpenAL have to people like me that just run ZDoom with map packs, gameplay mods and the like?

[Marisa the Magician]

OpenAL has broken handling of stereo sounds (they play full volume regardless of distance), and I think that's pretty much the only problem I've come across so far with it.

[ibm5155]

I would only want openal to replace fmod when it gets 100% compatible, I still see iuses on it (Like sounds that are now playing at the same level at any distance while fmod doesn't do that,...) so I don't see a need for it to be over the official builds. And if it doesn't drain too much cpu power compared to fmod.

and it may sounds weird, you make a Project for fun, then people can over you blaming that you should add feature x instead of y if not it sux, idk, it's just , weird...

And what's the really deal with being or not GPL? do you want to sell something with zdoom software render? if not you can already use zdoom for making any kind of game for free '-'

[phantombeta]

Not exactly just selling. Any commercial use.
This includes donations and some other things AFAIK.

[Blzut3]

Finally remembered what I what the topic was that I learned about donations and what not being considered commercial exploitation. It was some guy explaining why projects like Debian don't include software with no commercial use licenses in their repositories. It's because vendors want to be able to package the repo onto discs, usually with some small profit, but even if they're sold at the cost of the disc it's technically commercial exploitation. The point of the story was that even if preventing people from taking donations or distributing physically was not the intention of the license, they have no way of knowing and technically they are within their rights to pursue that kind of usage. Thus they can't distribute the software even if it's "free." Now if I could just remember where this was I'd link it, but sadly that's probably all I'm going to recall.