Important announcement regarding my involvement with ZDoom

[DoomRater]

I think he's implying Graf Zahl has tons of pull on DRD Team and thus is not neutral.

[wildweasel]

I think he's implying Graf Zahl has tons of pull on DRD Team and thus is not neutral.

Then I won't start the topic in the GZDoom forum, thus maintaining the balance. Graf might have his own subforum, but that gives him no power whatsoever over, say, the General forum.

[Michi]

As expected: Randy declined to comment this.

So where is this going now?

Graf's most recent changelogs to the GZDoom SVN repository seem to imply that he's almost finished with his DECORATE replacement so it looks like this will have repercussions rather sooner than later.

[Graf Zahl]

Graf's most recent changelogs to the GZDoom SVN repository seem to imply that he's almost finished with his DECORATE replacement.

That is correct. I finished the first phase of the new parser yesterday evening. Which makes it even more frustrating that Randy dumped the thread discussing it without even a hint of acknowledgement.

I'll make one thing clear: The reason why I decided to stop contributing to ZDoom is that things like this are endlessly discussed between me and the users but Randy doesn't feel the slightest need to participate so the only information to go on is still his 17 months old request not to implement my scripting language attempt.

If this changes and if I can see that the Feature Suggestions forum is seeing some more active maintenance I might reconsider. In any case, if Randy starts talking I am more than willing to integrate my recent work into ZDoom. Aside from minor technicalities I think it's working and might serve as a base to build a real scripting language upon.

But if things continue as they are, I'm sorry there is no chance that this might happen.


Another issue where Randy's input would have been much appreciated was the UDMF discussion earlier this year going on at Doomworld. It was basically Quasar and me who hammered out the details after endless discussion. Unfortunately we two and CodeImp seemed to be the only ones having an opinion. I never, ever heard a single word about this from Randy and still have no idea what his feelings are about this. (Of course the dismissive attitude of the Doomsday and EDGE developers was even more disappointing.)

[Slasher]

@ Graf: So, this means that you'll be splitting GZDoom off into it's own development path.

Though I'm fairly sure Graf's intentions are to continue to use ZDoom as a base, just not to work on ZDoom itself.

Correct. We'll see how this develops.

And I take this to mean that you'll be continuing to use ZDoom code in GZDoom, but you'll no longer be maintaining compatibility with ZDoom, as things progress.

So my question is, what if we find a bug? If it's a ZDoom bug, we report it here, although it may be relevant to GZDoom as well, you won't fix it here? And if someone here does fix it, you'll just grab the fix and add it into GZDoom as necessary? Or do we now have to post the same bug report in both forums?

Also, what about a feature suggestion? If Randy or whoever implements it in ZDoom, will you then grab it and add it to GZDoom as well? But if we ask you over at the GZDoom forums for a feature suggestion, you might add it?


I ask this stuff because it used to be the case where we'd ask for something that related to both ZDoom and GZDoom here, and if it got implemented, it'd eventually make it's way into both ports. Same with bug reports, if they were related to both they'd get fixed here and added to both in time. Now that the port's development is splitting, it all depends on where we ask for what, that depends on if it happens or not? Sounds like the ports will become very incompatible, very quickly...

[Cutmanmike]

I'm up for it and I've been up for it for more than a year. I think it's about damn time we stopped waiting and started getting creative. Isn't that the reason we're all here?

[skadoomer]

The reason why I decided to stop contributing to ZDoom is that things like this are endlessly discussed between me and the users but Randy doesn't feel the slightest need to participate so the only information to go on is still his 17 months old request not to implement my scripting language attempt.

Lets look at this a different way. Randy had an idea for a scripting implementation involving lua. However, that idea got pushed off to the side because he could not reach an agreement with you. Valuing you as a respected asset to zdoom, he put aside his idea to use lua as a way around all the super heavy lifting of crafting the specifics a scripting language himself (which is probably more work them he wanted to do).

If this changes and if I can see that the Feature Suggestions forum is seeing some more active maintenance I might reconsider.

Half of those are things that doomscript could/would cover (if we can build out own flags) and the rest are good ideas that require work.

In any case, if Randy starts talking I am more than willing to integrate my recent work into ZDoom.

For as little as you two actively communicate (unless you pm each other), you seem to work surprisingly well with each other. I haven't seem anyone re-writing each others code or uncommenting commits to the SVN that usually happens when one person gets upset at the other.

It is a shame that UDMF in the end was merely a peace treaty between Eternity and Zdoom on a unified map format. Maybe it will find its way into vavoom someday.

[Gez]

It is a shame that UDMF in the end was merely a peace treaty between Eternity and Zdoom on a unified map format. Maybe it will find its way into vavoom someday.

It already has. Janis follows the ZDoom changelog quite closely. Vavoom is compatible with ZDoom and GZDoom (giving it some time to apply the changes from the newest SVN).

[Graf Zahl]

Lets look at this a different way. Randy had an idea for a scripting implementation involving lua. However, that idea got pushed off to the side because he could not reach an agreement with you. Valuing you as a respected asset to zdoom, he put aside his idea to use lua as a way around all the super heavy lifting of crafting the specifics a scripting language himself (which is probably more work them he wanted to do).

If it had been just the syntax I wouldn't have done that. However, there is no way that Lua could have been decently integrated into the game. Lua is just too generic to be tightly integrated into ZDoom. If you design a game around it you may get somewhere. If you design the interface to push Lua into a game by brute force I doubt it would have been successful. It also would have meant a very awkward split between actor/class definitions and code. I had my good reasons for my opinion. Besides, I wasn't the only one who was against it.

If this changes and if I can see that the Feature Suggestions forum is seeing some more active maintenance I might reconsider.

Half of those are things that doomscript could/would cover (if we can build out own flags) and the rest are good ideas that require work.

90% of the current feature requests are dumped just to wait for a reponse by Randy - which never came. I just didn't want to close them without Randy's input.

In any case, if Randy starts talking I am more than willing to integrate my recent work into ZDoom.

For as little as you two actively communicate (unless you pm each other), you seem to work surprisingly well with each other. I haven't seem anyone re-writing each others code or uncommenting commits to the SVN that usually happens when one person gets upset at the other.

Randy reverted one of my commit (I dumped the DEHSUPP compiler) and of course we reacted to each other's changes in case we felt they were not optimal. But reverting stuff just to hit back at someone else is utterly petty and pathetic. I would never do such stuff.

It is a shame that UDMF in the end was merely a peace treaty between Eternity and Zdoom on a unified map format. Maybe it will find its way into vavoom someday.

What makes you think that? There was no peace treaty. We intensely discussed all differences we had until we reached an agreement. Of course we had to compromise a little just because we were working in a limited framework but in the end we got both what we wanted out of it. If you ask me, this is precisely how such things should be handled.

EDIT: And just in case someone wonders why I just made a commit to the ZDoom SVN: That were Friday's changes which I forgot that evening.

[Phobus]

The input from Michi goes to show me how people will gladly troll over absolutely anything and everything.

To a point, I'm actually kind of glad about this change of working, as it means ZDoom mappers using the software renderer aren't going to have to worry too much about people straddling the wrong side of the OpenGL line when it comes to playing anymore.

All the same though, it's fairly easy to see why Graf is doing what he's doing. It's not really my problem either way though, and I'm not on any side.

[Graf Zahl]

To a point, I'm actually kind of glad about this change of working, as it means ZDoom mappers using the software renderer aren't going to have to worry too much about people straddling the wrong side of the OpenGL line when it comes to playing anymore.

That statement doesn't make any sense at all.

[DBThanatos]

To a point, I'm actually kind of glad about this change of working, as it means ZDoom mappers using the software renderer aren't going to have to worry too much about people straddling the wrong side of the OpenGL line when it comes to playing anymore.

That statement doesn't make any sense at all.

I believe he meant that if both GZD and ZD are separated completely and features here arent there and such, there should be no more confusion about "it can run in ZDoom but will not work as intended"

About the topic itself: I believe that if each one of you have iyour own plans, you should do it, even if that mean splitting ZD and GZD compatibility

[Zippy]

To a point, I'm actually kind of glad about this change of working, as it means ZDoom mappers using the software renderer aren't going to have to worry too much about people straddling the wrong side of the OpenGL line when it comes to playing anymore.

That statement doesn't make any sense at all.

I believe he meant that if both GZD and ZD are separated completely and features here arent there and such, there should be no more confusion about "it can run in ZDoom but will not work as intended"

Or those situations where you can set something up to look correct in software, but then it just won't look good under certain OpenGL conditions (depending on the end user's lighting mode, dynamic lights, sprite clipping settings, etc.)

[HotWax]

I'm really sad to see it come to this, but I agree that the situation has been ridiculous for months (possibly years) now. While I admire and respect randy, it's not really fair to expect the community to hold its breath any longer. ZDoom is and always will be his property, and I think we all respect that, but it still saddens me to see Graf halting his contributions to it because over the past few years most of the advancements have come from him. It really seemed that Graf and randy did make a good team even if they didn't communicate enough; Graf has done quite a bit to extend the features and functionality of the game engine itself while randy has done a great job on the backend of the software engine. With these two no longer collaborating, I think both ports will suffer as a result. At the same time, I fully understand Graf's decision and realize it's been a long time in coming.

randy, I know it's probably too much to hope for, but I think a lot of people would be thrilled if you changed your stance on allowing Graf to implement his advanced language directly into ZDoom (assuming he's still willing) rather than force him to part ways and focus only on GZDoom. I know this is something you've stated you wanted to do yourself, but that hasn't happened and some of us have been waiting a very long time for it. It sucks that it's come down to Graf having to walk away from ZDoom in order to implement something he's had ready (in some form) for nearly 2 years. And it is, after all, only a first step right? Nothing's to say there won't be plenty more to add before it reaches the full potential of DoomScript anyway.

It would just suck to see the best damn source port be left behind over something that doesn't seem like that big of deal, and I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

[Nash]

Janis did VavoomC on his own (well for the most part anyway)... and best of all, look at the Vavoom user base/community. It's nothing compared to this community.

If he could do it, I don't see why Randy can't... I'm sure Randy would have done a hell of a better job at it, too... and also have a huge user base to back him up and support him.