The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Discuss anything ZDoom-related that doesn't fall into one of the other categories.
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Rachael
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The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Rachael »

I am starting to get a few questions about what the future holds for zdoom.org and its child projects.

A few of you seem to think that GZDoom and QZDoom development and discussion should be more active here, rather than on DRD Team. A "merge" - so to speak. Well - I don't think a merge per se, is appropriate, but if it becomes necessary I can open up subforums to segregate GZDoom and QZDoom discussion. I do not feel that will be necessary - we can use the General forum just as we always have. It may no longer be necessary to keep their counterpart DRD Team subforums open, and I have not yet decided exactly what I am going to do with those. Ultimately, however, their portal pages will still be hosted on DRD Team because I see no reason to move them, but pertinent announcements about them can certainly be made here. No matter what, I am not going to delete entire subforums - so DRD Team is not going to lose its post history - if anything does happen to them, the worst will be that the forums will simply be locked and archived so they can be referenced and looked upon later.

As for the forum staff - there's absolutely no reason to change them. They've done a fantastic job, up to this point, and I have no intention of interfering with them. I don't think new moderators are necessary, and I will most likely follow the advice of Wildweasel closely about that if he has any concerns or if he does need extra help - right now, I consider him a far more experienced moderator than I and I think he's far more in tune with this community's needs.

Up to this point, development of GZDoom and QZDoom have been full speed ahead - with no stopping. dpJudas and Graf Zahl are doing a great job (and yes, I pitch in occasionally when I can. :P). The ZDoom legacy will live on! Zandronum is presently trying to adopt ZScript into the fold, itself, so it might not be long before we start seeing multiplayer support for it. Hopefully, this also means they will be able to keep up more with GZDoom - this itself will be quite exciting, I am sure, for many Zandronum users.

The developer forums (Bugs/Features/etc) will slowly be closed out as we transition to MantisBT for both GZDoom and QZDoom. After that happens, they will be kept in a locked and archived state - just like how DRD Team did it with its old hosted sites. After that point, we will be using the trackers exclusively for bugs and features.

As for the site itself - eventually it will have to be moved into MancuNET. When that happens, I will try and make the transition happen overnight when relatively few people are on the forum. I will try to work with Manc about that to work out the exact details, but there is currently no timetable for that happening.

Just think of where we are now, though - in a single year, we've gotten ZScript, a true-color software renderer (with dynamic lights!), a triangle software renderer, and ZDoom as well as its child projects are better than they ever were before.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this thread and they will be answered as appropriate.
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by dpJudas »

This is just my opinion, but I think it would be cool if zdoom.org became the hub for all things ZDoom. GZDoom, QZDoom, Zandronum all represented.

In my dream scenario the zdoom.org main page would list releases from all three, the wiki would include details from all of them, and the forums would too. I realize that this might not be what everyone else wants though, but one can dream. :)
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Csonicgo »

Okay, so here are my demands. *gets out massive scroll*
  • We do need support, officially, for things like Mobile devices. not the touch-pad stuff, but OpenGLES2 support. the android forks out there already ahve this, but none of the official ports have carried that over. Such a move would allow the Raspberry Pi and other SoCs to have hardware accelerated rendering. And on that note:
  • Continued ARM support. this is crucial for futureproofing ZDoom. I feel that ARM will eventually take over completely in the mobile space, therefore, we need to make sure that these arches are supported fully. Blzut and you have done an outstanding job on this so far, let's hope this continues! there are some issues still around, like slopes in the distance with the wrong colors, and draw distance issues in general (as evidenced by shrooms.wad newstuff review that I did).
  • faster performance. Yeah I know, not a helpful bullet point - but stuff like Demonsteele have taken a nosedive in performance lately. I remember these being quite fast on my Raspberry Pi 2 - but now on my RPi 3, just doing the sword charge attacks slow down ZDoom to an unplayable state. This is not good! :V
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Accensus »

+1 for unification idea. Safer? No. More convenient? Hell yes.
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Eevee »

dpJudas wrote:This is just my opinion, but I think it would be cool if zdoom.org became the hub for all things ZDoom. GZDoom, QZDoom, Zandronum all represented.

In my dream scenario the zdoom.org main page would list releases from all three, the wiki would include details from all of them, and the forums would too. I realize that this might not be what everyone else wants though, but one can dream. :)
Seconded. The tree of ZDoom forks is already fairly convoluted, and now the root project is dead, but the docs and forum are still here, but the forks also have their own forums, etc...

Hell, just merge G and Q and call the result ZDoom 3.
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Rachael
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Rachael »

@CSonicGo:
I have previously announced my plans to backport D-Touch's OpenGLES renderer to GZDoom, if its license permits it. I will not, however, port its mobile phone controls or its file management system. That project will have to be done by someone else if they are interested enough to do it. My interest in ARM devices extends exclusively to the Raspberry Pi, although I do have an Android phone so I can help people test things if they want. QZDoom's ARM support is also in its planning stages, but due to LLVM difficulties I am not sure if this will be possible right now.

Ultimately, it's up to Graf how much he wants to support ARM devices for GZDoom. Don't expect too much especially right now while my personal contribution is still in its planning stages. All I can tell you is - right now, GZDoom compiles and runs perfectly fine. You will have to switch the renderer to software manually (unless you like it real slow! hehe). You will have to use a distro that provides the required libraries, however - and right now I believe Raspbian does not. (Until someone tells me otherwise) So at least Software users are not completely left in the dark right now.

@dpJudas + Eevee:
The divide between Zandronum and ZDoom is too great right now, I think. It's feasible to get QZDoom and GZDoom under a single roof, but I just don't think that's possible with Zandronum. Luckily, there's enough cross-over between Zandronum and ZDoom users that it doesn't hurt things too much right now. Announcing GZDoom and QZDoom releases certainly can be done here, though. :) I can certainly talk with Torr and see how he feels about Zandronum news being cross-posted over here, though.
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by wildweasel »

dpJudas wrote:This is just my opinion, but I think it would be cool if zdoom.org became the hub for all things ZDoom. GZDoom, QZDoom, Zandronum all represented.

In my dream scenario the zdoom.org main page would list releases from all three, the wiki would include details from all of them, and the forums would too. I realize that this might not be what everyone else wants though, but one can dream. :)
I would agree....except for the Zandronum part. Zandronum needs its own dedicated community, since its focus is so wildly different from the rest of the ZDoom-based ports, what with the master server and competitive scene and all. However, I wouldn't object to there being a single communal wiki, as long as things continued to be marked clearly as to which port they belong to.
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Eevee »

Oh, yeah, it makes sense to leave Zandronum separate.
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by dpJudas »

Eruanna wrote:QZDoom's ARM support is also in its planning stages, but due to LLVM difficulties I am not sure if this will be possible right now.
I can probably add some #ifdefs that will allow it to run without LLVM, although that will disable the truecolor mode.
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Rachael »

That'll work. :) That will at least get the updated pal mode renderer working, for now, if I am correct?
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Nevander »

Now if we can get multi-colored sector lighting (ala Doom 64) in GZDoom, all my dreams will have come true. Not only is it possible, it's a reality. The only problem is, nobody knows how this was done except Erick194.
This is a modified GZDoom version 1.8.10 , not finished, though (prototype). I'm currently working on with the new GZDoom version 2.2.0 to see if it is possible to add everything you will see in this video.
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Rachael
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Rachael »

@ Nevander: Don't hold your breath for that one. :P It certainly is neat, though. That's what the tracker is for!
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by MTrop »

All I really want from this is a better-performing 8-bit Software Mode. The last time any effort was made to improve it at all was at least 10 years ago. As it stands, QZDoom 1.2.1's 8-bit renderer performs worse than ZDoom 2.8.1's version of it, especially with 3D floors. It's the only thing that at least feigns caring about the colormap anymore.

Though I'm not sure how it can be improved short of scrapping it entirely and rewriting it from scratch. It is a monster of a codebase.
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by dpJudas »

Eruanna wrote:That'll work. :) That will at least get the updated pal mode renderer working, for now, if I am correct?
Yep. Pushed a NO_DRAWERGEN define that can be set. I didn't update the CMakelists.txt file to set it if LLVM is not found, though. You also need to make sure that NO_SSE is defined and that it boots with swtruecolor set to false. (basically I only did the easy part ;))
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Re: The future of ZDoom, GZDoom, and QZDoom, and this site.

Post by Big C »

Oh hey, Eruanna has an admin name now.

Regarding moving the site---I'm confused, doesn't Randi operate the ZDoom website? Or just the codebase uploadery? Either way, nice to know this place isn't going away anytime soon.
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