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

[leileilol]

Let's not forget the philosophy behind Zdoom though. What ultimately attracted me to it in the first place was its lack of a launcher required to run it and the KISS principle behind playing Zdoom in a more out-of-box instance. It wasn't in a gradually alienating featurecreep arms race.

[Minigunner]

I give it a year before development stops entirely, and modding fades off and the community as a whole starts to die.

[Sgt. Shivers]

Hell, just merge G and Q and call the result ZDoom 3.

I have had numerous issues trying to get GZDoom to run nicely but QZDoom is running fine, so it would be easier for me if they remained separate. I think it's good to have more options rather than only having one choice to choose from.

[Kinsie]

Hell, just merge G and Q and call the result ZDoom 3.

I have had numerous issues trying to get GZDoom to run nicely but QZDoom is running fine, so it would be easier for me if they remained separate. I think it's good to have more options rather than only having one choice to choose from.

Sure would be nice if you actually posted bug reports for your issues instead of just being all "BUT IT'LL JUST BE [NO]'ED ANYWAY "

[printz]

Hell, just merge G and Q and call the result ZDoom 3.

No. It sounds too much like Doom Legacy having the audacity to call itself doom3.wad

[Hellser]

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.

I agree full heartedly with this. Ease of use for all members, and we can keep the community together. But, it's up to Eruanna and whatever their decision is, I'll stick by it.

[4thcharacter]

Some silly question, the forums are going to have a whole new web address change as well?

[Graf Zahl]

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.

Don't worry, it's definitely on my roadmap for 2.4.0.

[Graf Zahl]

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.

The main problem is that it really should use multithreading far earlier than for drawing. But getting to a point where this is possible is going to be a major refactoring job because everything in the software renderer depends on global variables. So just to make the code manageable, it's inevitable that it may temporarily suffer from slowdowns.

For actual playing, I'd recommend to use GZDoom. QZDoom is doing the right thing but it also means that it may not be the best engine for actually playing the game. Which is also the reason that both ports are separate. Once the rewritten software renderer becomes more usable the best course of action will definitely to unify development as one port with two actively maintained renderers. But first things first - this code has never seen a serious cleanup in more than 15 years - it will take time.

[Graf Zahl]

Hell, just merge G and Q and call the result ZDoom 3.

No. It sounds too much like Doom Legacy having the audacity to call itself doom3.wad

Actually, that suggestion might be the actual long-term roadmap: Stabilize the software rendering in QZDoom, merge both projects, as the software renderer rework is the only major difference and bump the major version once it happens. Whether the whole thing can be renamed ZDoom then entirely depends on Randi who owns the name.

Keep in mind that the only reason why GZDoom was kept separate wasn't because I wanted this, it only was because I absolutely had no desire to deal with Randi's spotty release schedule.

That said, now that the weird ZDoom release cycle is out of the way, let me announce some changes in future development.

First, I plan to do far more frequent releases. I think a 2-3 month schedule overall, if the added features allow, for minor version releases, i.e. 4-5 per year, plus bugfix releases like 2.3.1.
It will also mean that the devbuilds hopefully become what they should be: Testing vehicles for the new features but NOT(!!!) versions to release projects against.
I will give no guarantees that I won't change feature implementations for the next official release. This is particularly important for ZScript where I will have to do an ad-hoc implementation of a feature first and later clean it up, just to get stuff going first.
It can also mean that I may discard a pull request, should I later find out that it wasn't such a great idea. In the past, with the overreliance on devbuilds to create mods that was basically out of the question.
So consider devbuilds a moving target from now on. The only guarantee I'll give about them is that they should do what the last official version did, with possible bugs fixed.

[Agentbromsnor]

I always loved the idea behind a unified ZDoom website, instead of the slightly fragmented community we have going on right now. The ZDoom wiki already includes a lot (if not all) of the features exclusive to GZDoom, so it's a nice start.

[dpJudas]

About the best way to get 8-bit playable on complex maps, one possibility is to add more 8-bit emulation support to GZDoom. There is basically no reason why it couldn't use textures uploaded in 8-bit and then do the light using a LUT matching the colormap tables. It would end up looking so identical to the software renderer that you couldn't tell them apart when there's no translucency going on.

We are quickly approaching a time where every single CPU out there has a GPU included that will always beat the software renderer. From my point of view, the software renderer is mostly about curiosity (how fast can it be made to run, how close to the GPU does it get?) and the fun of coding one than anything else.

[Tormentor667]

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.

Exactly my thoughts, and with you and Graf Zahl we have the right people spearheading this

Concerning the current situation in general, I think it would be a good choice to merge the forums for GZDoom, QZDoom and ZDoom somehow. It doesn't make sense at all to keep all of these seperated from each other if we consider that ZDoom's development is halted and QZDoom and GZDoom will merge at some point as well. By the way, any chance of updating the phpBB to the latest available version?

Beyond, if there is interest and need for it, I would volunteer to take care of a complete webpage for the ZDoom.org domain that covers all three ports, lots of content, screenshots, features, and whatever might be necessary to cover and to present the sourceports in a more modern fashion (e.g. something like boa.realm667.com comes to mind, it's easily maintained from an administration backend with multi-user functionality.) -- just let me know, and I'd be happy to come up with something

[Graf Zahl]

On the one hand that would certainly be nice, but considering the added bandwidth requirements it may be a bit problematic.
Since you seem to have more experience here, what would be the annual costs of a decent webspace solution for all this? Maybe it could be financed with a few donations, but this probably won't work completely for free.

[Graf Zahl]

BTW, it may be a good idea to link the changelog link on the home page to the GZDoom repo now, wouldn't it?